MEDIATHEK

It was dawn. Stravinsky was creating The Rite of Spring something unprecedented.
A Hymn was heard, an ode to Nature, a music of the world, life, greening once again. We now know that what he composed was a chant, the one of the forces united from the hollow of the spiral to the ineluctable blackness. Spring after Spring, from a war another spawned. The tender green of the leafs never really last.

Here’s the reddening of a new dawn.

The Rite was interpreted a thousand times over. The same brutal joy, both unforgettable and new, is readying itself to spring from the depth of the all ages, from the beginning of time. A clearing, the union of the bows, the cry of the soft grass cut by the scythe, the animal and its
charge, the hunt. A flux that roles both above and under the ground, the inexplicable rhythm of burning fires, the night, the wall of high cries stifling a complaint.

The inextricable violence.

How we would have loved to not have perceived this vision of the death knell of the old drums, their power,
their resounding persuasion which blends in the same: enliven then kill.

Here is our dawn. It finds us busying ourself with the strange job of recognising the forces intertwined in the body, dancing…

United to the same tune in the upmost disharmony, in order to celebrate yet another Rite.
To dance that which is dead and will be reborn and will die again. To say the rite, that which weaves what is dead with what is alive, the bone with ashes. To retell so uniquely what a man inscribe, to celebrate once again the gift of such a terrible joy. To breath in its rhythm for the last and first time, when already the veil will fall back upon our eyes.

And Africa, an entire continent contained in the space which separate the day ending and the one starting, a sunrise. The end and the beginning of a world. Another world which is still kneeling when Stravinsky sees the red suns rising in the East. A continent from which soars both a promise and the thick anguish of Spring. A land that supports the enormous pressure of the universe, the power of the surging future.
A last Kingdom to walk.

Heddy Maalem,

June 2003

/ CAST & CREDITS /

CHOREOGRAPHY: Heddy Maalem
MUSIC: Igor Stavinsky
SOUNDTRACK: Benoît De Clerck
VISUALS: Benoît Dervaux
DANCERS: Simone Gomis, Hardo Papa Salif Ka, Amie Gomis, Marie-Pierre Gomis, Marie Diedhiou, Shush Tenin, Serge Anagonou, Raphaeal Jimoh, Qudus Aderemilekun Onikeku, Awoulath Alougbin, Rachelle Agbossou, Alou Cissé, Dramane Diarra, Kehinde Awaiye, Taiwo Awaiye.

COPRODUCTION: CDC – Centre de Développement Chorégraphique de Toulouse / Midi-Pyrénées, Le Parvis – Scène Nationale Tarbes-Pyrénées, Centre Culturel Français de Bamako, Centre Culturel Français de Lagos, La Rose des Vents – Scène Nationale de Villeneuve-d'Ascq, La Ferme du Buisson – Noisiel – Scène Nationale de Marne-la-Vallée, CCN de Biarritz.

CO-PRODUCTION: Les Francophonies en Limousin.

CREATION RESIDENCIES: French Cultural Centre of Bamako, TNT – Théâtre de la Cité Toulouse, Théâtre d'Angoulême – Scène Nationale, Jean-Pierre Fabrègue Cultural Centre – Saint-Yrieix-la-Perche as part of the Francophonies en Limousin.
With the support of AFAA, ADAMI, Elf Petroleum Nigeria.

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