If context is everything–and I’m not saying it is– then then last night’s T.C debut of Faustin Linyekua’s “Festival of Lies” at the Cedar Cultural Center (smack in Minneapolis’s African neighborhood) deserves an effort to place our hearts and minds in the context of the African condition.
The gorgous dancing and the physical beauty of the three male dancers (Linyekula, Papy Ebotani, and Djodjo Kazadi) and the luscious body, dry delivery of text by Marie-Louise Bibish Mumbu held me thoroughly captive for 3/4 of the performance. There were powerful images (detached dolls, frames, reminding me of Debra Jinza’ Thayer’s great duet at eh Southern last month; borders of countries, coffins). I confess to losing interest, suddenly, for the last 20 minutes.
Given that the Congolese-Zaire-Belgian conflict began at least in 1960, I felt horribly out-of touch with the political history “Festival of Lies” is based on. My context this week is related to the Darfur film my cousin-in-law brought to the U of MN last week; visits with friends in the cast of “Lion King” in town this month; and my own upcoming trip to Africa in February.
Music humming, cricket-like sounds, flourescent lights, the yummy smell of fried plaintains and of incence. The plain stares of the performers, just seeing if we are watching, feeling the vibe. Are they going to shed light on the truth?
On opposite walls translations of rebel leaders from french to english (boy those dirty rotten stinking Belgians were quick to colonize the Congo, making french the spoken language!) are projected. Starting with the most recent speech by liars in 1998, it works backwards to 1960 (and then, in a quick history lesson by Faustin, to 1885, when the Belgian Congo was established) when no one could imagine the years and years of lies that would sweep the nation, turning people against each other, confusing media, international politics, and most of all Faustin Linyekula.
He doesn’t seem confused now. But his muscles, wirey and bowed, looked so complicated and intense. At times I thought of Chris Kattan from Saturday Night Live. Africa is a huge continent! People seemed to have constantly tried to take advantage of its natural resources, most especially, it’s people, or “strands of muscle” as Linyekula says.
The lies make us puppets. Who taught us about corruption?
It is chilliest (though my companions and others laughed, nervously?) when the men start leading each other by the head, gradually getting more menacing. Such a tender, beautiful gesture, taking someone by the head with two hands as though to draw someone in for a kiss, can turn ferocious, and does.
Again context: I had just taken class with Morgan Thorson, whose appealing, sophisticated movement I first got to know through Chris Aiken’s contact Improvisation classes. Thoroughly spine and pelvis driven, I thought of those two great movers (Chris and Morgan). Just then, Marie-Louise Bibish Mumbu joked “This is Africa modern dance” in her dry, french accent. It’s wonderful, slurpy, articulate, inimitable.
By the end, I felt I needed to get home. Faustin yelled out “Long Live the Losers!” and the others got audience members to get up and dance. I shrank, confused, not feeling at all like celebrating.
I don’t like liars.
Sally, I also found myself checking out about 3/4 or 2/3 of the way through. Earlier I felt Linyekula had set up a nice tension between words and dance (also see my comment on Galen’s post: http://blogs.walkerart.org/performingarts/2007/11/02/festival-lies/#comment-16610). For example, when Mumbu says, “Oh–this is African modern dance,” to me that read as a label, as a simplification. “This is African modern dance” does not entirely cover what was going on in the movement. But that labeling, that finishing, is one function of language, and a function Linyekula was calling our attention to.
I had a DVD of this performance earlier so I could write a preview, and I was (I admit) fast-forwarding through it just to get some words to apply to the dance. (That is, is it fluid, sensuous, jarring, etc.) But I had a hard time slapping words on. The dance was so episodic, for one thing, and each episode was different, and none of the episodes seemed more important than any other–the dance defied a lot of conventional description, and although I found that frustrating as a preview writer, I enjoyed it as an audience member.
But then that beautiful tension collapsed–Linyekula himself became seduced by words. And the performance lost its magic, for me.
Comment by Lightsey — 11/3/2007 @ 3:07 pm
I spoke with someone who saw last night’s performance and had kind of the complete opposite experience I had in that he wasn’t hooked until the second half (as opposed to my instant engagement and eventual loss thereof). We both felt disarmed by the option to dance at the end, after the exclamations of defeat and the paper bill propaganda were handed out.
What has stayed with me these two days has been simply the vision of other peoples’ lives, how they react to conflict, how they deal with a war taking place on their land.
Comment by Sally Rousse — 11/3/2007 @ 8:04 pm
I have thought of this piece...and my lack of political context with their history. They are creating a new history through this piece and a means of connecting to something truthful about humans. By the end I was toast- I couldn't read the script from the speeches because of my glasses! So, I lost a lot. The introduction of the table and babies was getting interesting and then didn't build. In essence, nothing really built for me. That is except for patterns of movement and lure of music and story line by the woman...but then, without carrying a sense of "history" through dramaturgy, there was no place but some place and that made me uncomfortable. I want to make sense and couldn't..and then we were back to equalizing out again.
I really liked the performers though- they were compelling and so I went with them on the journey. If they hadn't believed as much as they did in their own work, I would have given up 20 minutes into the show.
Comment by rebecca surmont — 11/3/2007 @ 9:05 pm
Hi, Rebecca. You know, I don’t think we were meant to understand the history, and I don’t think Linyekula expected us to have contextual knowledge. (”Festival of Lies” is performing all over the US this year; it can’t be a production aimed at an informed audience.) It wouldn’t have been possible to glean much from the excerpted speeches anyway. . . I think Linyekula wanted to separate us from the notion of “figuring out,” of “deciding” about Congo’s history. Perhaps he believes Congo has suffered from too much of that.
I liked the babies as well, but you’re right, not a lot happened with that.
Sally, I did dance at the end. The music and the space invited it–and I felt relieved the piece was over (I don’t mean that as a criticism; one is always relieved, I think).
I didn’t take “Long live the losers!” as an exclamation of defeat. I saw it more as a rallying cry. The people have been the losers in Congo. And they certainly don’t need any more winners.
Comment by Lightsey — 11/4/2007 @ 8:28 am
OK, so because i could not get to this event and I really wanted to, I checked out the blog. Happy to know there may be a DVD that I can get my hands on. Happier still to imagine the embodied puppet-like quality the dancers conveyed and that bit Sally Rousse put in about the holding of heads moving from tender to terror! Well, thanks.
Oh, and just a thought about being called losers and being expected to dance, that’s history for the colonized. Even when you are beaten you are expected to get up and dance… VERY LAST THING: what a clever Monty Python reference, those Belgians…
Comment by Heid — 11/4/2007 @ 8:39 am
I am interested to know how the final, local-infused performance went Saturday– and so glad someone got the MONTY PYTHON reference (”dirty rotten stinking Belgians”).
Comment by Sally Rousse — 11/4/2007 @ 9:02 am
Hmm. That’s very clever, that being called a loser and then asked to dance is what happens to colonized people. But that’s not how it read to me. Linyekula seemed to be celebrating the “losers”. And the performance was peppered with injunctions for us to get drinks, eat, etc. Galen comments on this in his entry.
The DVD is something shy of watchable. It doesn’t give a good sense of the performance. Not that it pretends to–it’s just a record, press material.
Along with Sally, I’m curious about the long performance. Can anyone enlighten us?
Comment by Lightsey — 11/4/2007 @ 4:34 pm
Sally and I spoke on Saturday afternoon - and yes, in the first half of the show I was waiting; waiting for the image/word/movement/combination thereof that would, eventually engage me. I knew it would happen because I know just a little bit about this choreographer and I know he makes work that can stick me - make me watch.
But it didn’t happen for so long! (Being physically repulsed probably didn’t help - my eyes are extremely sensitive to light so the bare bulbs made me squint and sometimes I had to block the light in order to try to see the performers). But, it did happen…somewhere in the second half I became enmeshed, specifically with Marie-Louise Bibish Mumbu’s text and delivery. The lines she spoke, beginning with “I am not your mother, Faustin” were clear and brought history, context, the Congo or not the Congo (meaning: anywhere), human lives, and her character’s human life into focus and power in a way that made the unreadable (because they were so often so awful) and projected texts, the fragmented images, the broken dolls, the lies, the truths, the movement, the bodies dancing, the harsh lights, the earnestness of it all into a manageable focus. Everything else was needed in order so that I heard her words and connected not just to them as sounds spoken, but to them as a trajectory from history, to now, and into the future.
So, I am glad I stayed - even though my eyes hurt and I had to rub them the next day as I talked with Sally.
And, yes - like Sally, I was “disarmed by the option to dance at the end..” Even though light and raucous music had been played throughout the performance, even though there had been jokes and funny bits infused into the show, an air of lightness, the eating and drinking, I did not feel like celebrating - and this WAS a celebratory dance inviting the public to communally join in the act of dancing. It is difficult to recreate ceremony though, difficult to rouse joy in a mass so I commend the company and choreographer for their efforts and I commend everyone who got up to dance. I just don’t understand where people found the force to do so - but I respect that difference and is one of the millions of reasons I love performances such as this…the varied responses.
I didn’t stand up to say any national anthem either.
But then, I am always wary when a large group of people is 1. given little information 2. asked to do something. Then, always amazed and a little bit scared when 3. the group does something they are told or encouraged to do.
It makes me think of too many awful things that large groups of people have done, with or without their full consent.
When a performer sat next to me and asked if I would sing the national anthem with him, I said, “Of this country?” He said, “I don’t know.” I said, “I don’t know if I can.”
I don’t sing this country’s national anthem and I don’t stand up for it if I don’t need to (I need to when I’m at a sporting game for fear I will get taunted if I don’t, and I need to at a funeral out of respect for the dead). Now, of course at the show it wasn’t that simple, I could choose without fear, there was no anthem sung and, just as it had been in the personal interaction between me and one performer, it was never even clear which anthem would/could have been. This was nice - the ambiguity, the allegiances, the fact that we all have national anthems whether we want them or not.
So, this standing for a national anthem and this getting up to dance are related to me. I did neither. I was fascinated with the process of both, the reasons people do what they do when they are asked or invited, what community means, what could be accomplished with a single, willed resolution. I absolutely was enamoured with the image of so many people standing. It WAS beautiful, and the light shone on your faces….
But Heid’s (purposefully offhand??) comment, “being called losers and being expected to dance, that's history for the colonized” makes me rethink that beauty — what are we standing for, really? What are we dancing for, really? What are we celebrating, really? That things aren’t as bad in some places as they used to be? That things aren’t as bad in some places as they could be, as they will yet get?
Or, are we simply standing and dancing for the human spirit? Or, for physical relief? Certainly beautiful options.
In any case, I am still disarmed and therefore, so thankful I stayed until the dance floor was full.
Comment by Emily Johnson — 11/4/2007 @ 4:43 pm
In response to what emily’s questions about what the dancing implies:
I was confused by the loser comment but I wasn’t lost in my confusion. I knew that I could be the loser in this context but more than me, many Africans have been the losers in a history that is heavily shaped by European and American interference. (It’s clear that the American CIA was complicit in the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, Congo’s first post-colonial leader).
I feel like dancing after this piece soaked in the disturbing hisitory and present of our Global situation is about human needs. To stay healthy and keep from becoming depressed we need stimulation and contact. Our brains work better when stimulated physically, so if we want to process and take in some complex ideas dancing makes perfect sense to me.
That said, I’m not sure Faustin set us up all that well. I had trouble looking at the lights too, even though I thought that they were intended to be beautiful. When they were done performing, I felt the traditional western, proscenium derived distance between audience and performer. I wasn’t ready to take up their energy or display myself in what felt like their space. It called up some of the awkwardness of a middle school dance: a desire and obligation to participate but a real confusion about how.
Comment by Galen Treuer — 11/5/2007 @ 1:27 pm
A friend and I stood up for the national anthem and we didn’t want to sit down. I was at the long Saturday performance and stood, as Emily so thoughtfully surmised, for physical relief. I think that I also stood for emotional relief. Perhaps it was the higher vantage point I obtained by standing, but I somehow found myself playing a slightly new role in the Festival of Lies.
Faustin plays an interesting trick on us, the audience, by simultaneously incorporating us into the performance and holding us at bay. In Linyekula’s installation we the audience are both fellow villagers and foreigners. We are invited into this (simultaneously) undisclosed and overt perspective of reality, this truth that everything is a lie. We are cohorts who have no clear knowledge of what we are participating in, or to what extent we are even participating at all.
I was one of those crazy fools to break out my African dance moves before even finding my seat. Everyone, however, had the chance to mingle with performers before the performance began, to explore the whole stage space, to eat and drink, and to wonder if we should be sitting down yet because wasn’t the show supposed to start at 8? But in fact, the performance has already begun, and we are a part of it. And as soon as the lights change, as soon as the “real” performers start moving through repeatable actions, the audience is sucked much further away. I felt suddenly disconnected on one level, and very in tune on another.
Being invited to dance at the end was a bit like stopping the VCR after a poignant movie and getting a car commercial. It took some getting used to. At the same time, though, it made sense. There was no clear ending where everyone could clap and begin to move on with their lives. The music and the dancing were perhaps the only non-lies of the night; one way of subverting the layers of untruths piling up on the Congolese people like so many political speeches.
Comment by Sarah Russ — 11/6/2007 @ 10:30 pm
Did anyone see the Camille Lefevre’s review in the Trib?
Faustin Linyekula and his company, Les Studios Kabako, have made a miracle. From a harrowing cultural history of slavery, colonization and — more recently — decades of corruption, poverty and murder under a series of despotic rulers, the Congolese choreographer and his performers have fashioned “Festival of Lies.”
Click here to read more…
Comment by Emily — 11/13/2007 @ 10:40 am