The choreographers Salia Sanou and Seydou Boro have chosen to entrust their choreographic piece Figninto (l’oeil troué) to three young dancers and choreographers that they themselves trained. In this way, the transmission takes on a double meaning.
In a stripped-down setting, the movement of the dance highlights the notion of human fragility. Torn between unbridled accumulation of material objects and the passing of time, people no longer talk to each other. Their eyes do not see what is essential. The values that underlie the capacity for living together go down the drain: the possibilities for encounter, friendship, love. Figninto dramatizes this vulnerability of man. On stage, the sweaty bodies are drawn into a dazzling and energetic dance. The bodies struggle, fall, contort themselves, crash into each other. Each body moves in space, in manifest solitude, but it does not resist the temptation of meeting up with another for long. A dialogue ensues between the bodies, in which each brusque gesture of the one provokes a reaction from the other.

An Daniel Buren’s art installation. A buckets of water-covered stage. Two bodies, supported one on top of the other, to move ahead on a chosen path. This Salia Sanou’s choreographic performance appropriates unkown aspects of life.
From above the water, a suspended moment and bodies looking for themselves.

creation 2004
time : 35 mn

Why always always want to look like the other?
Why the reflection of ourselves, constantly sent us back by the society, still and always incite us to look for our second self?
Why do we need so much this frantic race of the world?
The mirror. A self image and its unseenpart. The constant and unchanging combination of reality and our imagination.
The expression of his own reflexion immerses him deep down in his inner self.

«Some dancers close the stage curtain. Others need to look at themselves. Ordinarily, I include myself among those who forget to look in the mirror. That enables me to better internalize the movement. The danced gesture is first a feeling to me».

To change the perception of his image, he reveals some truth and some unforeseeable. The whole body discovers itself and is reflected in the alchemy between time and move. The relationship established between the danced body and the observed body questions the inner life and the «extime». This wish to make visible some aspects of ourselves, previously considered as a matter of intimacy.

Everything seems taken for granted. Suddenly, in a split second, everything is turned upside down. The ground we stand on falls from under our feet.
A devastating storm leave us helpless.
We are swept into a never-ending cicle of human violence.
We rely on body’s states which are affected by extrem stress and violence. On testimonies of bodies worn out by life. On our individual and collective memory of daily and historical tragedies which befall us. Very close to us or on the other side of the world.

On stage, «into the distance, bodies come to bear against the wooden wall. A reception space, which send them back over and over again as if to take charge of their destiny until the end, whatever the outcome.

A dance movement in the city, in the street. To remember this place in Abidjan. This nightlife district. A hangout for young people and a now-extinct space for freedom.

«A danced movement in the same direction. While highlighting the uniqueness and the individual’s performance, one component part of a group’s wealth».

To invest this public space, where the everyday life is told. A place where humans come and go, rub against one another and confront each other to generate ideas. A dance movement in the city to reach out to others. To examine the public space and to offer alternative glances.

To create an interaction between actors and members of the audience. Princess street memories is based upon the participation of all dancers. Beginners, professionals and laypersons, who are eager to get used to the bodily practice as a sharing moment with an inquiring or not public of all ages.

«Face the world, where everything starts all over again, to surrender an instinctive dance. Improvised moments. With no preset thematic approach. A state of being, swept along by the move. To lose all sense of time and space. To rediscover distant and present emotions».

To dare dancing for yourself. After dancing for so long with the others.
This resolutely intimate show is an introspection of memory, tlifting the veil on the Sanou’s childhood.