Faustin Linyekula

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

Origin and family

Linyekula was born in Ubundu in the northeast of present-day Democratic Republic of Congo. Three years earlier, the country was renamed just under the dictatorial President Mobutu Sese Seko in Zaire. The far-reaching renaming policy Mobutu reasoned with the liberation of colonial and neo-colonial influences, but he actually took to consolidate his own power and established a state ideology, the Authenticité or Mobutismus was called. Consequently, Linyekula first name Faustin was not allowed to appear on official papers - Christian first names judged the Mobutu regime as an expression of subjugation of Africans. In the late 1990s, the ban was lifted.

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

Professional career

Linyekula studied literature and theater studies in Kisangani in the Congo northeast. After the universities were closed in his home country, he went in 1993 to Nairobi, Kenya, where he attended the University until 1996. After a stay in London, where he came into contact with theater, he went back to Kenya and founded in 1997 together with the pantomime artist Opiyo Okach and the dancer Afrah Tenambergen the group Gàara, the first contemporary dance company in Kenya. During this time, he also participated in a workshop of the coming of the Ivory Coast dancer Alphonse Pierou. Three years later he began to develop her first choreographies.

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

Then he returned to the Congo. In June 2001, he founded the studio Kabako as interdisciplinary meeting place in Kinshasa. To date, Linyekula works under this name with artists from the fields of dance, music, video and visual arts together. The then return to his home country can be seen as " of Most Resistance ", considering that labor and performance opportunities offered themselves to him at the same time in Europe.

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

Linyekula taught in Africa, Europe (Parts / Brussels, CNDC Angers / France, pulse dance / Vienna, Laban Centre / London, etc.) and in the USA. He also took part along with other African artists and intellectuals at a think tank devoted to the construction of an artistic center near Cape Town in South Africa. Due to the work of this think tank, the Africa Centre was established here in 2004 as a nonprofit organization that sees itself as a catalyst for social change and international artists in the context of geographical realities provides a platform to investigate artistic practices and the emergence of knowledge.

Since 2006 Linyekula lives in Kisangani, where the studios Kabako pursue their artistic activities at the local level. In May 2009 they opened the first professional recording studio in the eastern part of the country. In the long term plans Linyekula together with the German architect Bärbel Müller three cultural centers in the area 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 Recycles ( "Untitled Triptych - Fragments and Other Recycled Sludge ", 2002)
• Spectacularly Empty II ( 2003)
• Radio Okapi (2004)
• Le Festival of mensonges ( " Festival of Lies", 2005-2006 )
• The Dialogue Series: i Franco ( 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 )

More

• 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 per crie! ("My obsessions: I think and then I scream", 2006)
• Si c'est un nègre / car portrait ( "If did 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 )