Mandingue Horizons Dance: Cymraeg/Québécois – New Conversations collaboration

We’re so happy to announce that we have secured funding as part of the New Conversations proramme for our new Wales/Canada music and dance collaboration project ‘Mandingue Horizons – Cymraeg/Québécois’.   New Conversations is a programme funded and delivered by the British Council Canada , Canada Council for the Arts, Farnham Maltings , and the High Commission of Canada in the United Kingdom.

This project brings together two West African arts companies, The Successors of the Mandingue and Productions Sagatallas, exploring duality and unity using a new bilingual (Welsh/French) musical composition by N’famady Kouyaté as the catalyst for the co-creation of an R&D dance piece exploring the contrasting dance traditions of Boblée (Guinea/Canada), Shakeera Ahmun (Wales, UK), Oumar Almamy Camara (Guinea/UK), and Camille Trudel-Vigeant (Quebec/Canada).

The project will explore the experience of the West African diaspora in two countries that share a bilingual identity (French/English in the case of Canada, and Welsh/English in the case of Wales).  A recurring theme of pairs and duality will be explored in music composed especially for this project (featuring lyrics in both French and Welsh), and in terms of the pairing of traditional West African and Western contemporary styles of the dancers.

Two pairs will choreograph using the same musical piece but on opposite sides of the Atlantic and then come together online to form a pair of pairs to choreograph together – in a form where similarities and differences are explored – mirrors across screens and the possibilities presented by technology and split screens explored, as well as the limitations of a 2D medium.

Our project’s collaboration will combine ancient and modern with practitioners versed in their respective arts and disciplines using modern means of capturing and sharing ideas via Zoom and filming using mobile phones.  The work will use these dualities to create something non-binary, a unity that is facilitated by a single composition (musical and dance).  The choreography will be screened as a livestream, while the work as a whole – including clips of the process and commentary will be professionally edited together to create a short film for online distribution and dissemination.

Watch this space for updates!

See https://www.britishcouncil.ca/about/press/newconversationsroundthree for the press release regarding the full programme.

#NewCoversations2020 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🇬🇳🇨🇦

 

 

* Thanks go to Safyan Iqbal for putting together the artwork.