Shift the Center/VERSCHIEBUNG DER MITTE
Choreography: Opiyo Okach
Ensemble Compagnie Gàara, special guest Andréya Ouamba (Senegal) & Fatou Traoré (Mali)
Country Kenya (Nairobi)
German first night performance
Country Kenya (Nairobi)
German first night performance
Opiyo Okach gave the modern dance a new direction in Africa. His company Gàara, honoured in the whole world, was pan-African and interdisciplinary from the beginning. He founded a meeting place for dance, music, theatre, sculptures, sound and video art in 1998. His choreographies investigate our perception and identity. Starting point is the melting pot Africa. Here, everybody moves in several languages and dialects, cultures, religions, life and ways of thinking. The dance is an identity founder between the ethnic groups. It is based on ancient rituals whose meanings are lost in the shock of the modern age. The ensemble harmonizes contrasts, makes the variety of attitudes tangible spaciously, solves the boundaries between stage and auditorium, composition and improvisation and returns to the origin of the African dance, the interaction of the here and now. Okach’s dance is humorous, unspectacular, wide-awake, intimate and escapes every labelling anyway..
Supported by Culturesfrance/Département Afrique et Caraïbes en Créations
