Symposium
“NOT JUST DANCE”
General design: Zab Maboungou
December 12 to 15, 2018
MAI, Montreal, intercultural arts
Born in 1987 from a vocation to promote the art of dance in what is both spectacular and fundamental at the same time, Zab Maboungou/Compagnie Danse Nyata Nyata has set up a breeding ground for dance where, at the same time to the creative work of the company (about fifteen choreographic works), a training program, harnessed to research, takes place there in order to shed light on the movement animated by the forms of dance originating in contemporary rhythmicultures*.
A scout in this field, Zab Maboungou/Compagnie Danse Nyata Nyata sheds light on the potential that lies in terms of research and artistic creation, a concerted approach to what constitutes rhythmicultures, rich, among other things, in multiple African springs which cross them and nourish them abundantly.
In this spirit, the symposium "Pas just de la danse" is intended to be an initiative aimed at encouraging a broader understanding of the contexts and issues contained in the facts of political and aesthetic cultures, an initiative that we wish to be accessible in various regions of the world, with the collaboration of the various artists and communities in place, a "travelling" symposium.
Various subjects and discussions are announced in the wake of the event: Life and archives. Histories, transmission and circulation. Gesture and orality. Space and actuality. Techniques and teaching. Thought and freedom.
What does the dance do?
* Rhythmicultures of gesture, living speech and movement
Rhythmcultures set up, develop and perpetuate modes of apprehension (knowledge and spirituality) and appreciation (aesthetics) of life over time: rhythms, in fact, realize and incorporate the facts of culture in the form of archived partition of life, time and space, within collective ensembles.
These rhythmicultures, real mobile institutions, live and evolve in and through song, dance, music (the base), poetry, literature, visual arts, theater, ritual, divination, therapy, politics. , rhetoric, etc.
For the recipients of these rhythmicultures, the stakes are multiple, attached to the various territories and communities, to the various imaginaries and aesthetic forms, which nevertheless challenge and respond to each other, thus creating unprecedented conditions of freedom.
PREAMBLE
Initiatory paths of the spirit and of freedom; of strength and intelligence: African rhythm cultures, legacies and new worlds.
Active history and forgotten history, living memories and current events, art and contemporaneity, dance is a primordial history at the center of the worlds. Dance is not just dance: an open dialogue on these stories and on the gestures and bodies that carry them, disfigure them and reconfigure them through the issues involved in their constantly renewed handling.
ABOUT
The "Not just dance" symposium is aimed at artists, thinkers, critics, observers and amateurs for whom the art of dance remains an art of centuries to come and whose real issues, messengers of meaning, are at the heart of life, lived and to be lived.
The symposium "Not just dance" aims to put into perspective the dynamics of taking charge, both aesthetic and intellectual, of the challenges represented by the art of dance inherited and inspired by the rhythmic traditions of dance and music, including in particular those inherited from sub-Saharan Africa and for this symposium, the art of dance here will be the host as it should be: both free and welcoming, engaging and solicitous, moving from gesture to word and creating in situ, opportunity and reflection, dialogue and encounter, halfway between history to revisit and the future to recreate.
MODUS OPERANDI
For each of the avenues discussed below, a 4-part conversation project is envisaged: theme addressed (A), discussed (B), workshop (C) and artistic presentation (D).
1- ABOUT RHYTHMICULTURES: rhythms and epics, space and freedom; the gesture, spatial and identity marker (A, B, C, D)
2- ABOUT CREATION: bodies, contexts and creation; art and choreographic composition (A, B, D)
3- ABOUT TRANSMISSION: dynamics of transmission and transculture, technical, archival and didactic aspects (A, B, C)
Yambi!
(Welcome to Kongo)