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La Danse des sept tours
Extrait
La Danse des sept tours (the seven tower dance) is a choreographic and theatrical duet directly inspired by French novelist and playwright Laurent Gaudé’s poem Le Chant des sept tours (in De Sang et de Lumière, Actes Sud, 2017). Captured by the lyricism and force of this text recounting the human tragedy of the slave trade, choreographer Florence Gnarido undertook to deliver a choreographic adaptation of it while retaining an important place for the words, with the collaboration of Beninese actress Florisse Adjanohoun.
The piece is a reflection on memory: those of the captives that seven towers – for the women – and nine for the men, around the tree of oblivion, aimed to erase; that of a country, Benin, which played an active part in the triangular trade. It is also connected with the memory revived by the return, in 2021, of the former Kingdom of Dahomey’s 26 royal treasures, looted during the colonial conquest and displayed in a masterly exhibition in Cotonou in 2022, giving the opportunity to hundreds of thousands of Beninese to rediscover its patrimony..
To create this piece, Florence Gnarigo researched the history of slavery and heard from the inhabitants of Ouidah, one of the main points of embarkation to the Americas. The scenography and choreographic material suggest the relationships of domination that persist between cultures in Benin. Originally from the North, the choreographer’s costume recalls the heavy toll of slavery borne by the people of this region, raided and sold by the kingdoms of the South. A daily rural object, the calabash represents this collected memory, a fragile funerary urn that strikes at the heart and against oblivion. In addition to the dances of Rwanda and South Africa, there are the ceremonial dances of the Waama, Somba and Ditamaris, peoples of the North still sometimes considered by those of the South as savage or devoid of civilization.
A tribute to the millions of African slaves brutally torn from their homeland, the piece ends like a ritual: in the middle of a circle of statuettes symbolizing the souls of the deportees, the dance, testimony to their painful history, delivers them from oblivion. Every time I dance this show,” says the choreographer, “I have the impression that, in the end, I free the spirits of the slaves, and their souls fly away in peace: their struggle will not have been in vain, for the memory of their tragedy lives on.
Premiere: December 12, 2022, Institut Français du Togo, Lomé.
2023 tour : Ghana, Bénin, Togo.
Recorded on december 7th, Espace Fiôhomé, Lomé, Togo.
Source : Interview of Florence Gnarigo by Anne Décoret-Ahiha, June 16th 2023, Cotonou (Benin), December, 8th 2023, Lome (Togo)
