Dance Among the Water Lilies • Bintou Dembélé, Rite of Passage II Solo 2

Name: Dance Among the Water Lilies • Bintou Dembélé, Rite of Passage II Solo 2
Start: 2024-06-24T19:00:00+0200T00:00-00:00
Location: Musée de l'Orangerie

7 pm and 8.30 pm, Salle des Nymphéas

June 24th, 2024

*Bintou Dembélé*
© Christophe Raynaud de Lage

For Les Indes Galantes (The Amorous Indies), Bintou Dembélé took over the Bastille Opera House with thirty K.R.U.M.P, Voguing, Popping, Flexing, B-Boying, Electro and Funkstyle dancers.
Each dancer could express themselves in dance and testify to their own story. Since this collective adventure, the choreographer has returned to solo work with Rite of Passage II Solo 2 and continues to build on the story and track record of a being marked by experience of the scene, the street, clubs and competition.

“These are two chaotic worlds that confide in one another
One asks to be initiated the other feels vulnerable
Then silence shows up, breathing arrives on the scene
An address and movement appears
Percussive music summons up the sacred
Series of tremors, moves in slow motion, outbursts
Mark out the space taken up
The Meech moniker will make way for the story of the
Onomo lineage
Reinvent himself,
Let himself go in the celebration
The rite of passage takes shape step by step,
An invitation to share in an experience of movement
Steps from bygone days that intertwine
With the call of today’s body
Shadow and light subtly give shape
To an in-between world
Of the living and the dead,
Of the visible and the invisible,
Of cessation and liberation”

Bintou Dembélé.

Design: Bintou Dembélé
Initiated: Michel "Meech" Onomo
Light creation: Emmanuel Gary
Music production: Charles Amblard
Additional music Drumming - Phase I Steve Reich, Colin Currie
Sound mixing: Vincent Hoppe
Costume: Annie Melza
Produced by: The Rualité dance company
Coproduction and support Ateliers Médicis (Clichy-Sous-Bois/Montfermeil), CND, National Dance Center
Residency support : the T2G Théâtre de Gennevilliers CDN (Pantin), GPS&O Pierre-Doussaint Dance Center (Les Mureaux), Antre-Peaux (Bourges)
Cross-referencing // Villa Medici (Rome), Villa Albertine (Chicago)
Francis Kurkdjian Endowment Fund

Biography

Bintou Dembélé
A major figure on the French Hip-Hop scene, Bintou Dembélé started dancing in 1985, making his way in the underground world of street cultures, clubbing and first challenges.
In 2002, she set up the Rualité dance company, further developing her artistic approach. Her first solo piece Mon appart’ en dit long (My Apartment Says It All) initiated a “marooning” dance. Her creations Z.H., S/T/R/A/T/ E/S - Quartet, Le Syndrome de l’initié, Rite de Passage || Solo 2 and G.R.O.O.V.E., combine dance, music, voice and the visual arts to explore peripheries, ritual and bodily memories.
In parallel, she extends her artistic thinking through collaborations with artists working in other disciplinary fields, including the photographer Denis Darzacq (La Chute (The Fall) Series), the poet Grand Corps
Malade (Roméo kiffe Juliette video), and the filmmaker Yolande Zauberman (Révélations Césars 2021 video). In 2016, her meeting with the writer Dénètem Touam Bona led her to extend the notion of marooning to the arts.
In 2017, the visual artist Clément Cogitore asked Bintou Dembéle to choreograph the short film Les Indes Galantes (The Amorous Indies) by Jean- Philippe Rameau, which went viral on the 3e Scène platform.
On the occasion of its 350th birthday, the Paris National Opera then commissioned them to produce the entire opera-ballet, to be performed on the Bastille Opera House’s stage.
From 2020 to 2022, she was resident artist at Ateliers Médicis. In 2021, she was invited on a writing residency at Villa Medici in Rome and then at Villa Albertine in Chicago, which she inaugurated. In 2022, she received the SACD’s Choreography Award.
En 2023, Bintou Dembélé opened the Avignon Festival with G.R.O.O.V.E.