Gbé miton

Gbé miton (‘our voices’ in the Fon language of Benin) is a choreographic narrative in which choreographer Carmelita Siwa invites three other dancers to evoke the situation of performers in Benin and in Africa in general. Although many of them have completed a course of study, sometimes leading to a diploma, they are still often considered to be, at best, illiterate, at worst vagrants, delinquents, or even, in the case of women, who are rare in the profession, whores, easy to pick up, pieces of meat to be picked at. Gbé miton denounces this situation by giving voice and sight to Beninese dancers, who are rarely recognised as artists in their own right, unlike musicians. Using their own words and gestures, each performer tells the story of his or her own unique journey, struggles and dreams, far removed from the codes of social success from the Beninese point of view. But the play also reveals the petty rivalries, unfair manoeuvres, backstabbing and leg-biting that permeate the dance scene in this part of Africa, where in the absence of an institutional structure, made all the more glaring by the crisis linked to the Covid pandemic, everyone is working for their own survival, quick to dismiss their rivals, even though we would hope for more solidarity and mutual support. The figure of the political decision-maker is not spared: in a suit, hidden away in an office, an ignoramus with connections who lines his own pockets in the process, while the dance artists break their bones and  hopes on the rough cement of a dilapidated stage.

Premiere on 16 October 2020, Institut Français du Bénin, Cotonou.

Filmed on 28 November 2020, Institut Français du Bénin, Parakou.

Selected to represent Benin in the cultural section of the Games of La Francophonie, in August 2023, in Kinshasa (Democratic Republic of Congo), Gbé Miton won the bronze medal in creative dance. It is scheduled for December 2023 at the Festival Dialogues de Corps, at the CDC La Termitière in Ouagadougou.

Sources: Arts Ca’Danser dance company document, Interview with Carmelita Siwa, by Anne Décoret-Ahiha, 4 October 2023. « Au Bénin, la danse contemporaine demande autant d’engagement que d’abnégation », Le Monde, 7 August 2019.

This video was registered thanks to the support of the Institut Français, the Metropole de Lyon and the City of Lyon as part of the 2023 – 2024 project “Development of a digital resource on African choreographic creation and a tool for artistic training, art criticism and cultural mediation in Benin and Togo” led by Dr Anne Décoret-Ahiha.