SERVICE
Dancer and choreographer, Faustin Linyekula lives and works in Kisangani, North-East of the Democratic Republic of Congo, former Zaïre, former Belgian Congo, former independent state of Congo...
Following literature and theatre studies in Kisangani, he settled in Nairobi in 1993 and collaborates with Opiyo Okach and Afrah Tenambergen, co-founding in 1997 the first contemporary dance company in Kenya, the Gàara company.
Back in Congo in June 2001, he created in Kinshasa the Studios Kabako, a space dedicated to dance and visual theatre, providing training programmes, as well as supporting research and creation. Memory, forgetting, and the suppression of memory, - in his works, Faustin addresses the legacy of decades of war, terror, fear and the collapse of the economy for himself, his family and his friends.
With the Studio, Faustin has presented ten pieces. Among its most recent creations, "more more more… future" (2009) that has been extensively touring in Europe, United States and Africa, "Pour en finir avec Bérénice" (2010), Faustin’s own private version of Jean Racine’s piece previously staged for the Comédie Française in Paris in Spring 09 and "Le Cargo", his first solo (2011).
Faustin is teaching in Africa, Europe (P.A.R.T.S. / Brussels, CNDC / Angers, ImPulsTanz / Vienna, Laban Centre / London…) and in the United States.
In December 2007, he received the Principal Award of the Prince Claus Fund for Culture and Development and is member of the Akademie der Künste der Welt in Cologne / Germany.
Since 2006, Studio Kabako’s activities have resettled in Kisangani, and have extended to other artistic fields, including music and cinema/video. The Studios Kabako are organising regular workshops and training sessions, as well as producing and touring works by young Congolese artists. With Vienna-based architect Bärbel Müller, Faustin is working on a series of three cultural centres around the city or how to “acunpuncture” Kisangani by generating circulation of ideas, men and women, creativity between these three decentralised spaces…
Groundbreaking works of the laboratory centre have been completed on a 4200-square-meter piece of land, a few kilometres from the city centre and the residency centre should open in 2015.
22.04.2015
