Pin It
ImageThe hottest contemporary dance companies out of West Africa have teamed up for a highly physical and imaginative new work about life, death and identity.

Choreographer Lacina Coulibaly of Kongo Ba Teria and choreographer Olivier Tarpaga of Baker & Tarpaga Dance Project have created a new work, "Duna (the foreigner)," about the search for truth and freedom when faced with the unknown. This touring professional troupe will perform at the Cornell Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts on one evening only, March 10 at 7:30 pm.

Coulibaly, co-founder of the Burkina Faso-based dance company, Kongo Ba Teria, was recently an artist-in-residence at Brown University. His choreography has won the International Sanga II Choreography Competition. Lacina continues to challenge traditional dance boundaries and to create new movement dialogues.

Tarpaga is a choreographer, dancer, musician and storyteller from Burkina Faso. He is co-founder of Barker & Tarpaga Dance Project and Compagnie TA and founder of Dafra Drum and Dance Ensemble.  He is on the dance faculty at UCLA's World Arts & Cultures Department, where he is developing a teaching method called "movement transformation technique." Over the past 10 years Tarpaga has choreographed 13 major dance pieces that have toured in theatres and festivals in Africa, Europe, Asia and North America. His works are dedicated to social issues such as immigration, politics, injustice and colonization.

Coulibaly and Tarpaga will be the primary dancers in Duna and will accompanied by musicians Souleymane Soro and Wilfried Souly. Souly is a djembé drummer and an expert of the Dundun Drum. Currently living in LA, he teaches West African music and drumming. Soro began playing the balafon at age seven and the drum at age 11. He has performed in the US with the UniverSoul Circus, Disney World, and Hermanos Vasquez Mexican Circus.

----
v5i10
Pin It