Faustin Linyekula

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Faustin Linyekula with Wawile Bonane and his Soukous band at the Festival of Lies 2007 in Seattle .
Dancer, Festival of Lies , 2007
Destroyed dolls as symbolic victims of war, Festival of Lies , 2007

Faustin Linyekula (born February 27, 1974 in Ubundu, Zaire , now the Democratic Republic of the Congo ) is a Congolese dancer and choreographer . His work is based on the N'dombolo dance form and the music associated with it, a soukous variant. In terms of content, they deal with "the consequences of decades of war, terror, fear and economic collapse for himself, his family and friends". Linyekula teaches and tours in Africa, Europe and the USA.

Origin and family

Linyekula was born in Ubundu in the northeast of what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Three years earlier, the country had just been renamed Zaire under the dictatorial president Mobutu Sese Seko . Mobutu justified the far-reaching renaming policy with the liberation from colonial and neo-colonial influences, but he actually used it to consolidate his own power and established a state ideology called authenticity or mobutism . As a result, Linyekula's first name Faustin was also not allowed to appear on official papers - Christian first names were viewed by the Mobutu regime as an expression of the submission of Africans. This ban was lifted in the late 1990s.

Linyekula grew up in a multilingual and multicultural environment of Roman Catholic origin.

Professional background

Linyekula studied literature and theater studies in Kisangani in the Northeast of the Congo. After the universities in his home country were closed, he went to Nairobi , Kenya in 1993 and attended university there until 1996. After a stay in London, where he came into contact with theater, he went back to Kenya and founded 1997 together with pantomime Artists Opiyo Okach and the dancer Afrah Tenambergen the group Gàara , the first contemporary Tanzkompanie Kenya. During this time he also took part in a workshop by the Ivory Coast dancer Alphonse Pierou. Three years later he began to develop his first own choreographies.

Linyekula traveled to France, where he worked as "Artist in Residence" first with the choreographer Régine Chopinot and then with Mathilde Monnier . In 2000 he finally created the piece Tales off the Mud Wall (2000) together with the South African dancer Gregory Maqoma as part of the ImPulsTanz in Vienna.

Then he returned to the Congo. In June 2001 he founded Studios Kabako as an interdisciplinary meeting place in Kinshasa. To this day, Linyekula works under this name with artists from the fields of dance, music, video and visual arts. The return to his home country at that time can be seen as the "path of greatest resistance", considering the work and performance opportunities that were available to him at the same time in Europe.

In 2003 Linyekula choreographed a piece for six hip-hop dancers as part of the Suresnes Cités Danse festival in the French city of Suresnes near Paris. Later, in 2005, he received a carte blanche from the French National Dance Center to hold a festival. The result was Le Cargo - ten African companies presented their work in this context, for the majority it was the first performance in Europe. In 2007 Linyekula's Festival des mensonges ("Festival of Lies") was shown at the well-known Avignon Festival , as was Dinozord: The Dialogue Series (2006)

Linyekula teaches in Africa, Europe (Parts / Brussels, CNDC Angers / France, ImPulsTanz / Vienna, Laban Center / London etc.) and in the USA. In addition, he and other African artists and intellectuals took part in a think tank that was devoted to building an artistic center near Cape Town in South Africa. As a result of the work of this think tank, the Africa Center was established here in 2004 as a non-profit organization that sees itself as a catalyst for social change and offers international artists a platform against the background of geographical realities to examine artistic practices and the creation of knowledge.

Linyekula has lived in Kisangani since 2006, where Studios Kabako pursue their artistic activities on a local level. In May 2009 they opened the first professional recording studio in the eastern part of the country. In the long term, Linyekula and the German architect Bärbel Müller are planning three cultural centers in the vicinity of Kisangani, including a center for artistic research to be built eight kilometers from the city center of Kisangani.

Linyekula is the winner of the Prince Claus Award 2007.

Choreographic works (selection)

With Studio Kabako

  • Spectacularly Empty I (2001)
  • Triptyque sans titre - Fragments et Autres Boues Recyclés ("Untitled Triptych - Fragments and Other Recycled Sludge", 2002)
  • Spectacularly Empty II (2003)
  • Radio Okapi (2004)
  • Le Festival des mensonges ("Festival of Lies", 2005–2006)
  • The Dialogue Series: i. Franco (2006)
  • The Dialogue Series: iii. Dinozord (2006)
  • La Fratrie errante (2007)
  • more more more ... future (2009)
  • Pour en finir avec Bérénice (2010)
  • Le Cargo (2011)
  • Stronghold (2012)
  • Sur les traces de Dinozord (2012)
  • Drums and Digging (2013)

Further

  • Cleansing (1997, with Opiyo Okach, Afrah Tenambergen and la Compagnie Gàara)
  • Tales off the Mud Wall (2000, with Gregory Vuyani Maqoma )
  • Telle une ombre gravée dans la poussière ("Such a Shadow Etched in the Dust", 2003)
  • Mes obsessions: j'y pense et puis je crie! ("My obsessions: I think and then I scream!", 2006)
  • Si c'est un nègre / autoportrait ("If that is a Black Man / Self Portrait", 2003 - solo for the French dancer Sylvain Prunenec)
  • Bérénice (2009, by Jean Racine, on behalf of the Comédie-Française in Paris)
  • Sans-titre (2009, solo by Raimund Hoghe for Faustin Linyekula)
  • Les épopées miniatures (2011)
  • La Création du monde (1923-2012) (2012)

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Program of the Berliner Festspiele for the Foreign Affairs Festival 2013 , accessed on July 5, 2013.
  2. ↑ Linyekula in an interview with Toba Singer, San Francisco 2005. , accessed online on July 5, 2013.
  3. ↑ Brenda Dixon Gottschild, “My Africa is Always in the Becoming:” Outside the Box with Faustin Linyekula , essay in Walker Magazine of September 1, 2007, accessed online October 12, 2013.
  4. ↑ Program text in the festival archive from 2007 , accessed online on October 12, 2013
  5. ↑ Program text in the festival archive from 2007 , accessed online on October 12, 2013
  6. ↑ Information on the "Studios Kabako" website (in French) , accessed online on October 12, 2013

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Linyekula, Faustin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION African choreographer and dancer
DATE OF BIRTH February 27, 1974
PLACE OF BIRTH Ubundu, Zaire