“In 2019, Bintou Dembélé, a hip-hop pioneer in France, became the first Black female choreographer to be hired by the Paris Opera. Her group of fierce dancers, performing a range of street and club styles like krump, electro and voguing, became a symbol of diversity at the heart of a venerable opera house.” – The New York Times
Beginning with Palabre (“A space for speech dedicated to and catered for a community, a village or an assembly. To celebrate oneself, to show off, to mourn, to act with responsibility in the name of the I and/or the We.”) Bintou Dembélé invites Francophone thinkers and artists to collectively demonstrate the power of cultures from the peripheries. Filmmaker Alice Diop (Saint Omer), Mame-Fatou Niang, Director-Founder of the Center for Black European Studies and the Atlantic at Carnegie Mellon University, Audrey Célestine, Associate Professor of History at NYU, Mawongany (Afropunk – Paris) and others come together to find common strengths with New York’s marginalized communities.
Each day culminates in Dembélé’s work Rite de passage // solo II, devised for the dancer Michel “Meech” Onomo and drawing on both artists’ background in hip-hop performance. Developed during a residency at Rome’s Villa Medici, this piece investigates ritual space as a site of body memory, and asks what form a “maroon dance” might take today.
Symposium: whole day starting from 12pm
Performance: 7pm
Duration: 50 minutes
Co-Presented with Performance Space New York.