Smaïl Kanouté – Never Twenty One (2019-2020)
For two evenings (July 17 and July 24) , The Invisible Dog Art Center and the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in New York are thrilled to invite you a series of dance films featuring new French and international talents.
The films of different lengths and styles explore themes as diverse as identity, disability, violence, youth, transmission, and transformation and, first and foremost, the beautiful language of movement.
We will present movies by Smaïl Kanouté, the collectif LA(HORDE), Eric Ming Cuong Castaing, Ana Pi and two documentaries, both filmed in Senegal, one about Germaine Acogny and The School of Sands by Laure Malecot and the other about young dancers from Dakar filmed by Diane Fardoun.
Drinks will be served and chairs will be provided. Entry and drinks are free of charge, but you can make a pay-as-you-wish donation at the door before or after the event.
These films are part of A Catalogue of Dance Films, an initiative developed by the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in collaboration with Institut français, Ministry of Culture-Delegation à la danse, Maison de la danse-Numeridanse, and Centre National de la Danse.
The Invisible Dog would like to express special thanks to Nicole Birmann Bloom and Simon Courchel.
Opening
7:30pm – Opening + drinks
8pm – Films
Smaïl Kanouté - Yasuke Kurusan (2020)
Smaïl Kanouté - Yasuke Kurusan
2020
Duration: 15 min
Co-Direction: Abdou Diouri and Smaïl Kanouté
On the border between fiction and documentary, Yasuke Kurusan depicts Smaïl Kanouté’s journey as he follows in the footsteps of a recovered legend, Yasuke Kurusan, an African slave who arrived in the land of the rising sun at the end of the 16th century and was granted the exceptional status of samurai. Kanouté's choreographic writing conveys the transformation of the bent body of the slave into the proud and upright body of the samurai, through the encounter between African dance and the art of Bushido (code of honor of the Samurai). Drawing inspiration from aikido, bushido, Butoh, the tea ceremony, and his own choreographic journey, he explores at once a dance, energy and state of mind. After meeting artists who practice ninjutsu, bushido, hip-hop and contemporary dance, he meets African-Japanese mixed-race individuals who represent the cultural encounter between modern Africa and Japan. This 15-minute film, directed by Abdou Diouri and Smaïl Kanouté, is the starting point for a choreographic work on stage for 2022.
These two short films can be presented together as a diptych; they are part of a series of short films by Kanouté that deals more broadly with the impact of colonialism and the persistence of ancestral rites as an affirmation of identity.
Production/Co-production: Le Ministère de la Culture - la Délégation Générale de la Création Artistique (DGCA), La Maison Européenne de la Photographie (MEP), les Ateliers Médicis, la Compagnie Vivons.
Partners: Le Centquatre-Paris, le Waterlight Graffiti, la Maison de Thé Houan Kitakamakura (Japon).
Bio: Born in 1986, Smaïl Kanouté is a French-Malian graphic designer, dancer, silkscreen artist, and graduate of ENSAD. He lives and works in Paris. Among many projects, he has worked in fashion with the designer Xuly Bet and performed with Raphaelle Delauney, Radhouane El Meddeb and others. Kanoute created his own company Vivons, and has since created several performance pieces including Les Actes du Désert. In visual arts, he has frequently collaborated with the street and visual artist Philippe Baudelocque, and for Tino Sehgal’s major exhibition ‘These Associations’ at the Palais de Tokyo in 2016.
(LA)HORDE, Brutti Debrouwer Harel – Cultes (2019)
(LA)HORDE, Brutti Debrouwer Harel – Cultes
2019
Duration: 15 min
Direction: (LA)HORDE, Brutti Debrouwer Harel
More than fifty years after Woodstock, the music festival has sprung up from the masses that generated it and become a dominant form of cultural participation in the music industry.
As they scan the crowd with their cameras, the collective (LA)HORDE captures the gigantic gathering as a graceful crowd. Unexpected shifts make the film oscillate between disenchanted paganism and animal spirituality, jubilation and anxiety, ecstasy and descent. A kind of worship manifests in ritualized practices and performances: slam, mosh pit, cercle, wall of death. In the project, which combines film with live performance, three dancers transfer this choreographic language to the festival goers so that they embody a mass jubilation.
Production: HIRVI - Nérimen Hadrami
Bio: Founded in 2013, (LA)HORDE is directed by Marine Brutti, Jonathan Debrouwer and Arthur Harel. In September 2019, the collective took the direction of the CCN Ballet national de Marseille. Dance is the core of their project in which they develop choreographic plays, films, performances and installations. (LA)HORDE collaborates with communities who share a common position of being outside of the mainstream culture. With them, the collective examines the wide range of dance’s meanings while keeping an eye on various powerful choreographic forms, whether they are massive or individual, from raves to folk dances and jumpstyle. They explore internet’s new dynamics of circulation and representation of dancing bodies while questioning the almost infinite serendipity that this new territory offers.
Intermission
9pm – Pause
9:30pm – Film
Germaine Acogny - Iya tundé, La mère est revenue (Iya tundé, The Mother Came Back) (2017)
Germaine Acogny - Iya tundé, La mère est revenue (Iya tundé, The Mother Came Back)
2017
Duration: 52 min
Direction: Laure Malécot
The documentary follows the French-Senegalese dancer, choreographer, and professor, Germaine Acogny, through her teaching and creations, while turning 70. From workshops at L'École des Sables (School of the Sands), in Toubab Dialaw, Senegal, to master-classes she gives in Africa, in Asia, in Europe, to her own choreographies and the testimonies of her collaborators, the movie lifts the veil on the personality and the inspiration of this outstanding artist.
Production: Moctar Ndiouga Bâ/ MEDIATIK
In French with English subtitles
Bio: Born in Benin in 1944, Germaine Acogny grew up in Senegal before moving to France as a teenager. She entered the world of professional dance through her teaching, opening her small African dance studio in Dakar in 1968. Thirty years later, she created the École des Sables, the only professional dance school on the African continent, a training center, research laboratory and meeting place. It was with her solo work, Sahel, that she produced her first choreographic work, in 1987. One year later, Yé’ou would take her around the world. Germaine Acogny has continued to choreograph and dance ever since. Now 75 years old, she has not given up on climbing the charts, and she will develop and stage the duo Common Ground[s] with Pina Bausch's iconic dancer Malou Airaudo. In 2021, the Venice Biennial awarded her the Golden Lion of Dance.
Bio: Laure Malécot is a journalist freelance for diverse media, scriptwriter and director living between Senegal and Ivory Coast since 2007. She studied Cinema (1995-1998) at University Paris 8, working on full-length films. In Senegal, she founded and directed, African Resonance, a one-hour weekly program from 2004 to 2012, for Aligre FM, a Parisian independent radio station. In addition of the documentary Iya tundé, the Mother Came Back, on the choreographer Germaine Acogny, she conceived a biography To Dance the Humanity dedicated to the artist and published by Vives Voix (Senegal).