Balau

Serge Aimé Coulibaly is known for his expressive, energetic dance language which allows bodies and gestures to become immediately political. In “Balau”, a group of highly contrasting people live through a night and a day and experience events both beautiful and brutal that are completely unforeseen in the here and now of our complex world: weddings are celebrated; disasters unfold; lamentations are expressed. The astonishment, joy and grief arising in reaction to such events are referred to as “Balau” in the West African language of Dioula. For this performance, six actors from the Münchner Kammerspiele ensemble and two dancers come together in a community of fate formed of expressive bodies with the rhythmic language of Fiston Mwanza Mujila on their lips.

Following his celebrated dance guest performance “C la vie”, and having co-directed “Les statues rêvent aussi. Vision einer Rückkehr”, Coulibaly is now developing his first dance theatre piece for a German public theatre. The internationally acclaimed choreographer began his career as a dancer with Alain Platel and works and lives in both Burkina Faso and Belgium. For “Balau”, he is collaborating for the first time with the award-winning Congolese-Austrian writer Fiston Mwanza Mujila who is creating a new long-form poem for this work.

“I try to resist the usual ways of thinking and see things differently, partake in different perspectives and tell the story from the lion’s rather than the hunter’s point of view.”

– Serge Aimé Coulibaly, choreographer