Dance

With photographer Alban Mecuyer, Adama Tibiri Adame offers a solo
KURU, THE SPIRIT OF THE CITY
Bobo-Dioulasso, in Burkina Faso, was founded in the 14th century
century. The city has grown by absorbing neighboring villages and then causing the emergence of new
outskirts. At the same time, the former capital of the country is making
continue the tradition of masquerades dedicated to the deceased or to ancestors.
Kuru, the spirit of the city is a danse and video project that explores the evolution of Bobo-Dioulasso, its physical geographies, social and political.

To what extent are the new modes of urbanization freeing themselves from the mythological dimension that presided over the first settlements of the region? What remains of the pact made between the founding ancestors and the kuru when moves away from the historic center to reach the factories of the industrial zone or the more westernized suburbs that appeared in the over the past decade? By adopting the form of an uchronic story, where new architectural styles are substituted little by little in the original cradle of the first inhabitants, this work initiates a broader reflection on the place of spirituality in the construction of the contemporary city.

During 18 minutes and 15 seconds on a score by Philip Glass, 5 dancers affirmed musically and spatially are going to be immersed in the emergency.

Urgency is present in many places today, in many fields and at different levels. It is what requires an action, an immediate decision, a necessity to act quickly without possible delay.

The musical power imposes and reveals bodies with a physical engagement pushing to exhaustion, asserting the dynamic lines that shape a uniform space. It is absolutely necessary to belong to the present during these eighteen minutes and fifteen seconds where one de.counts the time by conversing and weaving with the music in an obsessive way.

For the materiel :
– beach stuff
– caddy
– table and computer

Dimensions :
– indoor or outdoor with 10m x 10m.

Author: Egle Ukanyte
Performers: 4 dancers
Music: A. Sapiega
Duration: 40mins
Contemporary dance performance „Taming Loneliness“ is an artistic research work about a relevant topic – solitude. Dancers embodied aspects about solitude that they found during the research process. And expressed them through movements and emotions in an open dramaturgy performance with live gong music. During the process dancers had to get used to changing circumstances, new ending every time, undefined music, each other and the solitude theme.

Our dance piece is called “Nin eu, nin ti”.
A space, two bodies.
To fall and get up.
Repetition.
The charge of weight and suspension accompanies the rythm of the movement.
(In)dependence between both bodies.

Materials: Technical equipment for musicians, lights, smoke machine. This projects is designed to fit in any space. So it’s important to know what space we would be performing in so we can work with it. We have performed in a small gallery (as seen in my video submission), a theatre in the center of Prague with 4 stories of apartments turned gallery spaces, an Austro-Hungarian invalid building for soldiers.

The beauty of this project is how each space, each performance is different. Watching it transform with each new version. Each new audience.

The concept is to bring people together. Not only the audience and the artists. But also artists who would normally not meet in their professional world. Musicians and dancers from different backgrounds in one space. Connecting and creating an ephemeral moment of artistry and exploration.

After completing her master’s degree in Euroamerican Literatures, Translation and Literary criticism in Italy and thanks to her passion for languages and new cultures, the 4-lingual openminded globetrotter fell in love with Afro dance. Since then she has participated in several dance and art projects, shows and video productions. Dance for Ellina is a language per se, an inner voice that communicates with the outside world, conveys feelings and emotions, connects souls and arts, that’s why she is focused in the first line on the freestyle and the inner flow of movement.

Originally Russian the song speaks up to every woman in the world encouraging to stand up for ourselves: “stand up and go”, ” you are strong enough”, ” we are the change” are the main exclamations. The song is a fusion of the different music and singing styles. It calls every woman to liberate herself from patriarchal and ancient (also, partly traditional) thinking patterns, it’s about resistance against stereotypes, about transformation and self-awareness. Every woman regardless her nationality, sexual orientation,believes or appearance has a right to have a free choice of her life style.

I grown up with those stereotypes about woman the song is talking about, so I know how hard it is to step above them, I keep doing it every day. In my dance interpretation of this song I used steps of different dance style and worked with visual traditional signs to break the wall of the stereotypes, symbolically freeing myself.

For hundred of years woman and her sexuality is being controlled through rights limitations and morality, but we can decide how we act, think and appear: we are the change.
We’re all unique, we’re all one.