Faustin Linyekula Ngoy
What the Hell are we doing here?

What the hell are we doing here? Why the hell are we still here? Political crisis, social crisis, economical crisis, environmental crisis, we live in a world where the crisis notion has become the reference and the backdrop to all possible personal and global development policies. One may wonder how bodies (may I say dance?) would survive in such a context. Where do we find the energy, the strength to continue or at least to hang on in dance, contemporary dance, this fragile space that has always needed to be protected, even in better off contexts. Last year, after a decade of company works, I created my first solo ever. At the beginning of the process was the question of how do I continue. Going as far back as my first memories of dance appeared to be a possible answer. I’d like to share this question, to reflect over a few days with a group of artists on what keeps us moving/dancing in this collapsing world. As a starting point, every participant will prepare a one-minute solo that springs from their oldest memories of dance, and we’ll together attempt to bridge all the way to the world we are in today. To paraphrase Jean Genet, perhaps the only way to be political is to dig from the intimate. Fiat poesia! 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 settles 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.