About
Life is an ongoing dance. Movement is in every cell. Dance happens in all encounters between humans, plants, objects and materials. We constantly dance with others, exploring the familiarity and the strangeness of otherness.
Life is a dance within culture, between cultures, as we are constantly moving from place to place, from language to language, from a dance practice to another. Dance is an invitation for encounters beyond language. It is about exploration, transformation and communion.
Since my early childhood in West-Africa, my life has been about involving new communities. Always an outsider, trying to understand emic languages (spoken or in movement). This early anthropological eye moved me towards Anthropology and the practice of ethnography: in Tanzania, in Western Contemporary Dance, in Senegal.
I am working between Anthropology, Dance Studies, Contemporary Dance and Traditional African Dances, thinking out of a phenomenological experience. Practice and theory gather in one breath, and materialize in words on paper (and sometimes in performance or other media).
SKILLS
Contemporary Dance | Contact Improvisation
Afro-Contemporary | Sabar | Mandingue
Affects | Body | Intimacy | Improvisation | Movement | Senses
Artistic production processes
Anthropology of dance | Dance studies
Fluent in French, German, English & Spanish
Daily Life Swiss-German & Swahili
Collaborations with Dance Companies
Contemporary Dance
Massimo Furlan, Nicole Seiler, deRothfils
Nina Stadler, IfSenz, Cie Cadmium
Afro-Contemporary
Cie Fodac, Cie Dogo Mussole
Yama Wade, Aziz Bara Kara Niang
Cie Kunda - André Dramé
In this video essay, I present my embodied engagement, demonstrating my way of using dance as a space for intimate ethnographic encounters. The footage display fieldwork performances in China, Tanzania, Montreal and India, as well as my past participation in dance projects in Switzerland. They are traces of my anthropological journey through space and movement.
Collaborations with
Universities
Institute of Anthropology,
Institut d'Histoire de la Médecine
& Santé Publique
University of Lausanne CH
Institute of Dance/Theater Studies,
Walter Benjamin Kolleg
University of Bern CH
Institute of Anthropology
University of Aberdeen UK
Faculty of Fine Arts
University Concordia, Montreal
2019
University Paris 8 2020-2022
Swiss National Research Foundation
since 2013
Dr. Claire Vionnet
Postdoc Fellow, Faculty of Fine Arts, University Concordia, Montreal
Associate Junior Fellow, Walter Benjamin Kolleg, University of Bern
