Dorothée Munyaneza Mailles
Carte blanche – Résonances
[Dance]
This year sees the Festival d’Automne giving a carte blanche to the choreographer, singer and author Dorothée Munyaneza. In her piece entitled Mailles, a choral work for African or Afro-descendant female artists, each body and voice brings to the stage it its own life story, commitment and might. A performative concert will also be accompanying the show.
Maille is a women’s show. Whether they be artists or intellectuals, they hail from the four corners of the earth and are black, African or Afro-descendant. And committed. Dorothée Munyaneza’s various encounters with them go back in time and their ongoing dialogues have been a rich source of intimate details, shared readings and sensations. She unites them onstage in order for their different paths to be heard, as well as the violence of their life stories and History itself. In doing so, she enables audiences to share in the combat that these women have been waging in spaces where they often face rejection. Thus, the piece is a celebration of female might, a driving force in art as much as in life. Their memories peopled with elements of the past converse with present-day accounts to angry effect, the stitches of a single piece of material. In this symphony for seven voices, Dorothée Munyaneza seeks to weave the fabric of these stories in collaboration with the designer and visual artist Stéphanie Coudert. The costume and the material itself thus become the through-line for what happens onstage, thereby raising questions about the feminine and bodily freedom.
For the purpose of this carte blanche proposed by the Festival, Dorothée Munyaneza will also be bringing audiences a performative concert of shared music and poetry in the company of artists she admires.
