Democratic Republic of Congo
Faustin Linyekula (b. 1974, Ubundu) is an exceptionally gifted choreographer whose work vividly communicates the complex experience of living with conflict. When local opportunities were blocked by government closure of universities, Linyekula moved to Kenya where he joined a theatre and dance workshop. In 1993, he co-founded Kenya’s first contemporary dance group and a prize at Angola’s International Dance Festival resulted in invitations to perform internationally. Linyekula was commissioned to create Tales Off the Mud Walls for Vienna’s 2002 Summer Tanz Festival.
Despite his burgeoning international reputation, in 2001 Linyekula returned to Congo where he set up a teaching studio and created a ‘homecoming’ work entitled Spectacularly Empty, which explores the chaos of memory and realities of return.
Drawing on his personal experience and engagement with the lives of people in the Congo context, Linyekula’s works are deeply humanistic and paradoxical narratives. Spare yet rich, simple yet complex, physical yet philosophical, they mix global influences and ironic local detail. There is no retreat into facile aesthetics. It is visual theatre of the highest calibre. Major works include Triptyque sans Titre (2002), turbulent fragments of a society in conflict; Spectacularly Empty II (2003), an ironic look at materialism in Kinshasa; and Le Festival des Mensonges (2005-06), an exploration of Congo’s evolution.
Studios Kabako, his centre for performance, education and exchange in Kinshasa, provides a multi-disciplinary environment for experiment, attracting musicians, poets, designers and artists as well as dancers and actors. Linyekula performs, tours, participates in workshops across Africa and internationally, and is involved in long-term collaborations with groups in Ethiopia and South Africa. He directed a three-day event featuring African choreographers in Paris in 2005, and in 2006 created a work for the New Crowned Hope Festival in Vienna.
Addressing the complexities of history, identity and conflict with courage, introspection, sensitivity and humour, Linyekula raises questions about the post-colonial condition and the violence done to ethics. In his hands, dance is a tool for bearing witness and for engaging with the outcomes of that witnessing.
Faustin Linyekula is honoured for his outstanding choreography, for his bold return to the turbulent context of the Congo, for his innovative activation of culture in the face of conflict, and for his energetic commitment to the development of his community.
On Wednesday, 12 December 2007 Faustin Linyekula was presented with the 2007 Principal Prince Claus Award of €100,000 by His Royal Highness Prince Constantijn in the Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ in Amsterdam.
Faustin Linyekula
Portrait by Antoine Tempé
"Radio Okapi"
Copyright: Agathe Poupeney
