Kirina

“Wanderers who arrive in a country will spend a long time helping to build that country. That is human reality and its hope.”

In Kirina Serge Aimé Coulibaly makes internal migration within the continent of Africa the theme of a choreographic, musical and intellectual exploration. Migratory movements have always had a key effect on our cultures and been agents of transformation. What are the languages, musical forms and narratives that have been created through migration and how have these influenced the cultures of other peoples and countries? In his search for a contemporary language equipped to question the present world and its underlying systems, Serge Aimé Coulibaly will address the founding myths of West African culture and how its stories operate across generations in the consciousness of today’s societies and influence their visions of the future. Kirina is the name of a place in present day Guinea that has deep symbolic significance for the foundation of West African culture.

In Rokia Traoré, the internationally celebrated musician from neighbouring Mali who creates her own contemporary version of classical Mandinka music, Serge Aimé Coulibaly, himself from Burkina Faso, has found an ideal partner for this new work. His choreography will be enhanced by four musicians and the dialogue between two singers and one narrator. The intellectual and textual basis for the work will be provided by the Senegalese economist and musician Felwine Sarr, author of the book Afrotopia, with its pleas for an African “contemporanéité”.