How does C la vie relate to the celebrations and rituals of Burkina Faso and elsewhere?

In C la vie, I'm looking for a way to talk about something essential: the life that we lead, that guides and shapes us. To do that, I wanted to go back to various rituals and rites of passage without infringing on traditional ceremonies, which are sacred. I grew up in a village called Sindo in the Senufo region. Each year, to mark the end of the dry season and the start of the rainy season, nearby villages would gather for the Wara ceremony. People arrived and became part of something else, with the whole village involved. Some rituals end with possession. But these specific rituals don't appear in the show. Instead, there are very simple, thoughtful gestures that are part of social conventions, but which are not necessarily the gestures of the Mossi, Fula, or Samo people expressing themselves on stage. Burkinabé people know exactly what they are.

These elements don't necessarily speak to Western audiences in the same way. But I have also worked in other reference points that these audiences can relate to. Even if you start with traditional societies, the geopolitical reality of the contemporary world always catches up with you eventually. And in the videos, we make connections with cultures around the world. There are rites from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Bantu communities. I'm constantly seeking to defy categorization while asking myself: what am I bringing to the creation of contemporary dance? What am I bringing to choreography based on African realities? What type of dance can I create so that people stop seeing only traditional dances—or hip-hop—in my works? That's what gives me the freedom to take a different approach to drawing on traditional societies.

The virtuoso, complex, and repetitive choreographic language of Faso Danse Théâtre is very recognizable. The performers in C la vie include core members of the company who helped shape your method of writing, along with some recently arrived members. How do you approach the transmission of your language?

What defines this language is the point of view—my point of view on dance, on how I want the body to speak to people. We share many ideas, then I shape them by choosing and tweaking them. The choreographic vocabulary is developed in this way. I feel like a sculptor who's working with shapes that have already been established, but must now refine them and find a style that resonates with him. In that sense, the new performers contribute a lot. I wanted a certain freshness of approach in C la vie, without losing the vocabulary that we've created over time, which the other performers also help to preserve. It's a process of mutual influence. I bring people together both because they resemble each other and contradict each other.

Personally, I developed as a performer and choreographer by working with dancers who had a lot to teach me. That's what allows you to keep moving and feed your curiosity while staying true to yourself. That's what I discovered with Alain Platel (Ballets C de la B). At that time, I was the only African dancer in the company and also the only performer who wasn't from a ballet background. Each time we had to create something, it involved raising one leg up high—and I wasn't able to do it! What could I do to contribute with my own body and my own language? I wanted to be accepted for who I was. That led me to take a step back and think about all the education I'd received in African popular dance—I don’t use the word "traditional," because I didn't do traditional dance. I wanted to draw on the strength, presence, and beauty found in our dances. By combining them with something else, you achieve a language that is imbued with their power but also understandable from other points of view.

The title C la vie ("that's life") could be taken as expressing a certain fatalism or resignation, but the vital energy that permeates the work resists such an unequivocal interpretation. However, death and grief play an important role in it, especially in the scene featuring the figure of the fighter.

What is life? I got the title from the cover of a philosophy journal published during the pandemic, on which there was an image of a woman alone in nature. The question prompted me to think about the desire to exist, of course, but also about death and sadness. In choosing this title for the show, with the letter "C," I'm alluding to a very common expression in Burkina Faso, which you hear from childhood on: "la vie est un combat" (life is a battle). The second part of the work gets into the political side of things and evokes, in a way, the tensions, the treaties, the bombings, and the arms race associated with battle—in other words, the destruction, and self-destruction, of humanity that's taking place.

We incorporate the image of a fighter in boxing shorts to show someone who's struggling and not afraid to suffer a blow. Djibril, one of the performers in the show, recites the names of fighters who fell victim to terrorism in Burkina Faso. We also decided to refer to some figures in the resistance with whom we feel a strong connection. For example, we mention Dabo Boukary, a student activist who was assassinated by the Regiment of Presidential Security under Blaise Compaoré (president of Burkina Faso from 1987 to 2014). He led important student revolts that truly shook the government. We also celebrate the memory of the journalist Norbert Zongo (1949-1998), a passionate defender of democracy and freedom of the press whose wrongful death caused a national uproar. For me, Palestine and Ukraine are also part of the show, because it speaks about the bravery of those who died. I have always lived alongside death. C la vie is a kind of exorcism, a way of sublimating it, and a tribute to those who defend their country.

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