PRESENTS A FESTIVAL
New York 19 Oct. — 14 Dec. 2023
DOROTHÉE MUNYANEZA
MAILLES
NEW YORK LIVE ARTS 26 & 27 OCTOBER 7.30 pm
VENUE NEW YORK LIVE ARTS DURATION 60 min. TO BOOK TICKETS NEWYORKLIVEARTS. ORG
To her, there is beauty in rebelliousness. From Bristol to Seville, from Haiti to Marseille, Dorothée Munyaneza weaves together the intimate journeys of five black female artists who are African or of African descent. Dorothée Munyaneza was born in Kigali, Rwanda, in 1982. In the summer 1994, after the genocide against the Tutsi, the artist, 12 years old at that time, moved with her family in London. The memory of genocide runs through her work. With Mailles, Dorothée Munyaneza expands on work she began in 2014 with autobiographical pieces. Today her voice speaks for other accounts. For this creation, she builds connections with Ife Day, Yinka Esi Graves, Asmaa Jama and Nido Uwera, all artists and all on stage. Mailles is not a gentle show, it’s a brilliant pronouncement against the places from which they were rejected. The ensemble is a choreographic choir that pierces the stage with rage, beauty and freedom. A sense of power comes from the collective, which here is symbolized by the costumes of designer and visual artist Stéphanie Coudert. The flowing clothes and voices of the poetesses and singers and the intense movements join together, forming a common body both militant and essential. A haunting melody of many voices.
Conception and choreography DOROTHÉE MUNYANEZA Artistic choreographic collaboration IFE DAY, YINKA ESI GRAVES, ASMAA JAMA, ELSA MULDER, NIDO UWERA Performed by IFE DAY, YINKA ESI GRAVES, ASMAA JAMA, NIDO UWERA, DOROTHÉE MUNYANEZA Artistic collaboration, « suspension » stage design STÉPHANIE COUDERT Stage design Advisor VINCENT GADRAS
Texts YINKA ESI GRAVES, ASMAA JAMA, ELSA MULDER, NIDO UWERA, DOROTHÉE MUNYANEZA Music ALAIN MAHÉ, ALEX INGLIZIAN, BEN LAMAR GAY, DOROTHÉE MUNYANEZA Sound ALAIN MAHÉ Lighting CHRISTIAN DUBET Technical management ANNE GENESTE, ALICE LEMOIGNE, JULIA RIGGS Executive production VIRGINIE DUPRAY
©Leslie Artamonow
AMÉLIE BLAUSTEIN NIDDAM
Production COMPAGNIE KADIDI EMMANUEL MAGIS / MASCARET PRODUCTION Coproduction Théâtre de la Ville - Paris | Festival d’Automne à Paris | Charleroi Danse, Centre chorégraphique de WallonieBruxelles | Châteauvallon, scène nationale | Théâtre de Saint-Quentin-en- Yvelines, Scène nationale | Le Grand T, Théâtre de Loire-Atlantique | CCN-Ballet national de Marseille | Next Festival, La Rose des vents, scène nationale de Lille-Métropole, Villeneuve d’Ascq | Théâtre National de Bretagne | Théâtre de Nîmes, scène conventionnée d’intérêt national, art et création, danse contemporaine
With the support of DRAC de Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur | Ministère de la Culture | Fonds de dotation du Quartz, scène nationale de Brest | La Chartreuse, Villeneuve-lès-Avignon, Centre national des écritures contemporaines | Spedidam, Département des Bouches-du-Rhône et Ville de Marseille. Thanks to Villa Albertine / Ambassade de France aux États-Unis. HLENGIWE LUSHABA MADLALA, ZORA SANTOS, KEYIERRA COLLINS, HLENGIWE LUSHABA MADLALA, ZORA SANTOS
Dorothée Munyaneza: Mailles Conception, choreography & performance: Dorothée Munyaneza Artistic and choreographic collaboration & performance: Ife Day, Yinka Esi Graves, Asmaa Jama, Nido Uwera Artistic collaboration and “suspended” scenography : Stéphanie Coudert Scenographic consultant : Vincent Gadras Texts: Asmaa Jama, Yinka Esi Graves, Elsa Mulder, Nido Uwera, Dorothée Munyaneza Music : Alain Mahé, Ben Lamar Gay, Dorothée Munyaneza Sound creation: Alain Mahé Light creation: Christian Dubet Acknowledgments: Hlengiwe Lushaba Madlala, Zora Santos, Keyierra Collins Stage management: Anna Geneste Sound management: Alice Le Moigne Light management: Julia Riggs Executive production & touring: Compagnie Kadidi – Virginie Dupray, Nouria Tirou Production Virginie Dupray / Compagnie Kadidi, Emmanuel Magis / Mascaret Production Coproduction Théâtre de la Ville – Paris, Festival d’Automne à Paris, Charleroi Danse, Centre chorégraphique de Wallonie-Bruxelles, Châteauvallon, scène nationale, Théâtre de Saint-Quentinen- Yvelines, scène nationale, Le Grand T, Théâtre de Loire-Atlantique, CCN-Ballet national de Marseille, Next Festival, La Rose des vents, scène nationale de Lille-Métropole, Villeneuve d’Ascq, Théâtre national de Bretagne, Théâtre de Nîmes, scène conventionnée d’intérêt national, art et création, danse contemporaine With the support of DRAC de Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, Ministère de la Culture, Fonds de dotation du Quartz, scène nationale de Brest, La Chartreuse, Villeneuve-lèsAvignon, Centre national des écritures contemporaines, Spedidam, Département des Bouches du Rhône et Ville de Marseille. Presented in New York by Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels and New York Live Arts. Thanks to Villa Albertine / Ambassade de France aux États-Unis. Special thanks to Charmaine Warren and Tony Turner. Updated run time: 70 mins
BIOGRAPHIES
Asmaa Jama (artistic collaborator, performer) is a Somali multidisciplinary artist, writer and filmmaker based in Bristol. Asmaa Jama’s first film work Before We Disappear (2021) is an interactive moving image piece commissioned by BBC Arts. It was followed by The Season of Burning Things (2021), in collaboration with Gouled Ahmed, commissioned by the Bristol Old Vic (2021). The work has also been presented at the Venice Architecture Biennale in collaboration with the Goethe Institute and Theatre Neumarkt’s 100 Ways to Say We Programme (2021), and was part of the official selection at Blackstar Film Festival and Aesthetica Film Festival. Jama’s writing has been commissioned by Jerwood Arts, Hayward Gallery, Arnolfini and Ifa Gallery, Berlin. Jama was commended for the Brunel African Poetry Prize (2022); and shortlisted for the New Poets Prize (2022) ; Queen Mary Wasafiri Writing Prize (2021); James Berry Poetry Prize (2021); To Speak Europe in Other Languages prize (2020), and longlisted for National Poetry Competition (2021) A Cave Canem Fellow, Jama was also an artistin-residence at the School for Sonic Memory,Mucem/Onassis Stegi (2022) and at In Between Time Festival, Bristol (2019). Jama is currently a Film London FLAMIN fellow (2022); a resident artist at Somerset House Studios and a Barbican Young Poet.
Yinka Esi Graves, (artistic collaborator, performer) is a British Flamenco dancer, practitioner and educator whose choreographic work explores the links between Flamenco and other forms of corporeal expression in particular from an African diasporic and contemporary perspective. Yinka co-founded the contemporary flamenco company dotdotdot dance in 2014. Company’s works include I come to my body as a question, Sampled 2017 in collaboration with spoken artist Toni Stuart, and Clay (2015) with former Alvin Ailey dancer Asha Thomas. Yinka has featured in seminal film works including Miguel Angel Rosales’ award-winning documentary film, Gurumbé: Canciones de tu Memoria Negra (2016), the first Spanish film to highlight the influence its African population had on Spanish culture, particularly Flamenco. Graves’ first solo piece, The Disappearing Act, premiered at the Nimes Flamenco Festival in 2023 and will be touring in Europe and the United States in 2023-2024. Ife Day (artistic collaborator, performer) Born in 1987 in Portau-Prince, Haiti and today based in Marseille (France), Ife Day is a visual artist and performer. In the folds of a choral universe that blends bodies of text, videos, installations and dance, their protean playground becomes the place where deviant poetics/politics materialise. Closely linked to the
theme of displacement, Ife Day invests the physical-invisible, the chemicalsensible-prosaic to thwart the gaze, invest the dream, weave landscapes and offer subterranean detours. The artist develops a spatial, temporal and corporeal vocabulary inspired by Creole spaces in order to highlight different layers of alienation in family and society. Nido Uwera (artistic collaborator, performer) Of Rwandan parents, Nido Uwera was born in exile in Burundi, then settled in France in 1992. Fascinated by different bodily expressions, she continued her training with Elsa Wolliaston and Pierre Doussaint, with whom she danced for several years, as well as Robyn Orlin, Koffi Koko, Ismael Ivo, Nicole Ponzio, Yoshi Oida. Choreographer and dancer, she created Mpore, her association, through which she transmits traditional Rwandan dances both to members of the Rwandan diaspora and to anyone wishing to learn them. Her stories from yesterday and today give strength and momentum. Other artistic collaborations include Ariane Mnouchkine’s Les éphémères, Catherine Decastel’s Dieu venge les Siens, Pierre Doussaint’s Les Masses Merveilleuses and Tonia Shilling’s Blue God. Elsa Mulder (artistic collaborator) is a movement artist, dance teacher/
maker and event-producer. Relying on a community approach, she uses dance as a tool to communicate and tell stories, with a multiplicity of bodies. Her inspiration openly draws in her own personal experiences and culture as well as in the stories of the people she crossed paths with. Developing a multidisciplinary approach, she is collaborating with different artists of different fields and practices other crafts such as silversmiths. The last couple of years she has stepped in the world of eventproduction, and organizes events such as Omek, a platform that holds space for Africans in the Diaspora as well in the continent and their allies to make connections. She just moved to Ethiopia and wishes to continue to create space for others to tell their stories, create exchange and collaborate within the African continent and beyond. Alain Mahé (music composer) develops electroacoustic and electronic music. Founder of the Bohème de Chic band, he also collaborates with Jean-François Pauvros, Carlos Zingaro, Carol Robinson, Kamal Hamadache, Thierry Madiot, Pascal Battus, Emmanuelle Tat, Patrick Molard, Keyvan Chemirani, Hélène Breshant, Bao Luo... Alain Mahé composes radio plays as well as music and sound creations for the performing arts, working with
stage director François Tanguy, Pierre Meunier, choreographers Carlotta Ikeda, Ko Murobushi, François Verret, Collaborations with Dorothée Munyaneza also include Unwanted and Samedi détente. Christian Dubet (light designer) Having grown up at the foot of the Créac’h lighthouse where his father was a lighthouse keeper, Christian Dubet starts working as a lighthouse keeper before lighting up stages for theatre and dance. Collaborations in contemporary dance include François Verret and Francesca Lattuada. In the field of circus, he is a regular collaborator with the Centre National des Arts du Cirque in Châlons (France) and also worked with Mathurin Bolze – Cie MPTA. On the theatre scene, his lights met directors such as Jean-Yves Ruf, Thierry Roisin, Mélanie Leray, Jean-Pierre Larroche, Nicolas Klotz, Marc François, Robert Cantarella and Pierre Meunier... A visual artist, Christian Dubet created several personal and collective installations. Other fields of exploration include opera, music and architecture. In 2004, he co-founded with visual artist Vincent Fortemps, composer Alain Mahé and videographer Gaëtan Besnard the Cinémécanique company. Ben LaMar Gay (music composer) A Chicago native, Ben LaMar Gay
is a composer, cornetist, multiinstrumentalist, singer, poet, and patently eclectic polymath. He channels a radical array of sound, colour, and space through the universal language of folklore. Ben’s true technique is giving life to an idea while exploring and expanding on the term “Americana.” From Chicago’s iconic South Side neighbourhood, where he grew up, to Brazil, passing through Nigeria, France, Italy and Germany…, Ben LaMar Gay composes music closely related to everyday and political life and he is inspired by other cultures to create extremely rich, urgent and unclassifiable sounds. With the celebrated release of his debut album, Downtown Castles Can Never Block the Sun (International Anthem, 2018) and multiple commissions, he has established a unique place and voice in the creative ecosystem. 2024 will mark a new collaboration with Dorothée Munyaneza around Kae Tempest’s play, Hopelessly Devoted. Stéphanie Coudert (costumes and suspended scenography) Laureate of the Festival de Hyères in 1999 and Grand Prix de la Création de la Ville de Paris in 2015, Stéphanie Coudert has been using, for 20 years, her creativity at the service of the women in an independent way. The presentation of her Haute Couture collection at the Institut du Monde Arabe in 2015 is the foundation of a structural axis in her work: the search for an East-West link, formally translated by what she calls
her « Blurred Tailleur »: the introduction of the curve into a universe of forms related to power, in order to soften and fluidify the frozen « boxes » of the representation, and to assume its feminine contradictions. Stéphanie Coudert is also a theatre costume designer and has designed the costumes for most of Dorothée’s shows, including Toi, Moi, Tituba… (2023), a capella (2022), and Unwanted (2017)
We acknowledge and pay respect to Lenape people, elders, and ancestors past, present, and coming in the future. We acknowledge Indigenous people who may be present right now. We acknowledge and offer deep gratitude to Lenapehoking where we are now - the land, and waters of the Lenape homeland.
LIVE ARTS CONTRIBUTORS New York Live Arts is deeply grateful to all the individuals listed below for their vital gifts to New York Live Arts over the last year: $500,000 and higher Slobodan Randjelović & Jon Stryker $100,000-$499,999 Anonymous Eleanor Friedman Ruth & Stephen Hendel Alex Katz Foundation $50,000 - $99,999 Barbara & Alan Marks Jane Bovingdon Semel & Terry Semel | Semel Charitable Foundation Suzanne Karpas Helen Haje Matthew Putman Colleen Keegan in memory of Linda Grass Shapiro $25,000 - $49,999 David Dechman & Michel Mercure Zoe Eskin Adam Flatto Andrea Rosen Amy Newman & Bud Shulman Bloomberg Philanthropies Dance/NYC Ylva Cavalli-Björkman & Willard Ahdritz Jennifer & Jonathan Soros Lorraine Gallard & Richard H. Levy William Floyd Diana Wege / Wege Foundation $10,000 - $24,999 Ellen M. Poss Pat Stryker Claire Danes & Hugh Dancy Anonymous Patricia Blanchet/ Ed Bradley Family Foundation Agnes Gund Jody and John Arnhold Michael Malafronte and Julia Haley Alexes Hazen Nina & Gabriel Stricker $5,000 - $9,999 Patricia Blanchet | Ed Bradley Family Paula Cooper & Jack Macrae Barbara and Henry Pillsbury
Cindy Sherman Jeffrey B. & Wendy Liszt Jeannie Colbert Randy Polumbo Robert Longo JP Versace Jason Keehm Catharine Stimpson Ellen Pechman Derrick Adams Thomas Rom Joseph and Joan Cullman Foundation for the Arts, Inc. Jeffrey Schneider Rose C. Cali Herb Ritts, Jr. Foundation $1,000 - $4,999 The Angelson Family Foundation Tom Hennes Deborah Hellman & Derek Brown Kimberly Drew Erin Rossitto Joan Davidson Bill T. Jones & Bjorn Amelan Robyn Trani Helen Mills & Gary Tannenbaum Melissa Schiff Soros Bella Meyer Darnell L. Moore Mimi Garrard Gerald Appelstein Michael & Deborah Goldberg Kathleen Chalfant Thomas & Barbara Gottschalk Alida Latham Anna Wheeler Terence Dougherty & Pierre Duleyrie Alessandra Nicifero Brinton and Buck Parson Mickalene Thomas Jenny Holzer Andrew Keegan Nancy Meyer & Marc Weiss Susan Micari Kevin Harter Martha Sherman Eric Oberstein Meridee Moore & Kevin King Mark O’Donnell
Dee Dee Sides Hedy Klineman Gavin Kenny Jon and Wendy Smith James A. Turrell and Kyung-Lim Lee Turrell Beth Rudin DeWoody Jordan and Laura Rogove The Susan Stein Shiva Foundation Megumi & Bruce Williams Andrew Halliday $500 - $999 Arthur Aviles Leila Shakkour The Marshall Frankel Foundation Antoine Drye Otho Kerr Naima Green John Sansone Saami Bloom Leslie E. Stevens Aimee Meredith Cox
Carol Bryce-Buchanan Carol Yorke and Gerard Conn Cynthia Pearlman Wade Turnbull Deborah Swiderski Ellynne Skove John Sansone Jordan Baker-Kilner Erika Ehrman Fabian Bernal Linda Murray Emma Taylor Gifts and commitments between 7/1/20226/30/2023
Support for New York Live Arts is provided by the Arnhold Foundation, Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller Fund, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Ed Bradley Family Foundation, The Brant Foundation, Inc., Joseph and Joan Cullman Foundation for the Arts, Dance/NYC, Ford Foundation, Howard Gilman Foundation, Mertz Gilmore Foundation, Harkness Foundation for Dance, Marta Heflin Foundation, Alex Katz Foundation, Lambent Foundation, Alice Lawrence Foundation, Samuel M. Levy Family Foundation, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, National Performance Network, New England Foundation for the Arts, NYC COVID-19 Response & Impact Fund in the New York Community Trust, One World Fund, The Poss Family Foundation, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Jerome Robbins Foundation, The Fan Fox & Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, San Francisco Foundation The Semel Charitable Foundation, Scherman Foundation, The Shubert Foundation, Stavros Niarchos Foundation, Tides Foundation Corporate support for New York Live Arts includes Con Edison, Google, Tito’s Handmade Vodka. Public support for New York Live Arts is from Humanities New York, National Endowment for the Arts, New York City Department of Correction, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and the New York State Council on the Arts.
STAFF & BOARD Artistic Leadership
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Board of Directors
Bill T. Jones Artistic Director
Kim Cullen Executive Director & CEO
Stephen Hendel Co-Chair
Janet Wong Associate Artistic Director
Ali Burke Chief of Staff
Richard H. Levy Co-Chair
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Helen Haje Vice Chair
Dave Archuletta Chief Development Officer
Slobodan RandjeloviĆ Vice Chair
John Jahnke Institutional Giving Manager
Alan Marks Treasurer
Kyle Maude Producing Director Hannah Emerson Jernigan Producer Jessica Prince Producing Associate Production Chanel Pinnock Production Manager Leo Janks Lighting Manager James Bennett Audio/Video Manager Megan Dechaine Production Stage Manager Tricia Navigato Assistant Production Manager Creative Director
Zykeya McLeod Development Associate Felix Reyes Institutional Giving Assistant
Kim Cullen Chief Executive Officer Ex-Officio Bjorn Amelan
Finance
Sarah Arison
Nupur Dey Chief Financial Officer
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Manathus Dey Finance Associate Operations Gregory English Operations Manager Marcus Retegues Facilities Coordinator
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Bianca Bailey Community Engagement & Education Manager
Bill T. Jones Artistic Director Ex-Officio
ADP TotalSource
Aimee Meredith Cox Charla Jones Colleen Keegan Darnell L. Moore Amy Newman Randy Polumbo Ellen M. Poss Matthew Putman Jane Bovingdon Semel Ruby Shang Catharine R. Stimpson Board Emeritus Derek Brown
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