umuko

Musician and choreographer Dorothée Munyaneza, associate artist at the Maison de la Danse, enjoys letting body and voice resonate together. For her new piece, umuko, featuring five young Rwandan artists on stage, the choreographer brings back to life “the sparks and memories of this youth—vulnerable yet powerful, defiant and radiant.” The youth who dream of tomorrow’s Rwanda, without forgetting the past. By invoking umuko, the tree with crimson blossoms—the protective and healing tree of her homeland—she creates a celebration grounded in love, solidarity and joy. umuko cries out the urgency to dance, the need to create at all costs, despite wounds. A generative work that gathers and connects human beings with one another in a shared impulse of life and hope. The vitality of young artists carried by the sharp and powerful gaze of a passionate and committed choreographer.

Source: Programme notes, Maison de la Danse

28 years of rooting myself elsewhere.

First London, then Paris, and today Marseille.
For 28 years I have not forgotten umuko, the tree that illuminated my childhood.
The tree that resonates only in my mother tongue.
That vivid red tree, earth-red, that binds me to what begins, to what is lost and found again, with every return, to what continues…

IIII Amazi arakonja ntiyibagirwa iwabo wa mbeho IIII

Leaving.
Returning.

Each return to Rwanda is accompanied by an artistic journey to transmit, exchange and create.
Since 2009, I have carried out several artistic, musical and choreographic research projects with different communities—sources of inspiration, beauty and wonder for me.
Each return to Rwanda is like resuming a conversation with those who shape the artistic scene today: this young generation whose creativity, audacity and relentless quest for emancipation I deeply admire, even amid the precarity of everyday life and the fragility of existence.

III Water may grow warm, but it does not forget the cold it once knew III

Leaving.
Returning.
Returning to the foot of umuko.

The time has come to work with young artists in Rwanda.
The time has come to find the tree-place to which we return to regain strength along the winding and fertile paths of the creative process.
The time has come to pursue openness and the demanding work of connection.
The time of umuko is here.

II

The time to listen to those who are shaping the Rwanda of tomorrow, yet who do not forget—these “new ancients,” to borrow the words of Kae Tempest: Akayezu Jean Patient who, at just twenty, plays the Inanga beautifully, the traditional string instrument that celebrates the epics of the past; Impakanizi, an Intore, one of the chosen, who carries traditional dances and songs with both the lightness and detachment of a young man of this millennium and the gravity of an old master; listening to Abdoul Mujyambere, Michael Makembe, Cedric Mizero.

I wish to invite them into a creation where ejo—yesterday and tomorrow in Kinyarwanda—meet and tell their stories through the body, poetry, music, the inanga and song.
I wish to draw close to the umuko tree, guardian of our stories, healing tree, ancestral tree, to weave links between what is preserved, what resists annihilation and what is yet to come.
To lend an ear to the stories of ejo at the foot of umuko.
To bring back to the stage the sparks and memories of this youth—vulnerable yet powerful, defiant and radiant—like the crimson blossoms of umuko.

I wish for a creation-celebration founded on love, solidarity and joy;
a creation-generating-the-future rooted in a shared heritage;
a resource-creation that gathers us and connects us with our own and with others—ejo, yesterday and tomorrow.

II Amazi arakonja ntiyibagirwa iwabo wa mbeho IIII

Dorothée Munyaneza