A Nijinsky of the Ivory Coast
Undoubtedly, Igor Stravinsky could not have imagined that his Sacre du Printemps (1913) would find success in Africa, at the beginning of the Third Millennium, nor that so many black dancers would confront that "barbaric" Russian music that so shocked the audience and especially the French critics at the beginning of the 20th century. However, the potential surprise of the composer (let's imagine him still alive), who saw his youthful and groundbreaking score widely redeemed by worldwide success in his long life, cannot be our surprise either.
If it is true that Stravinsky's Sacre, especially in Vaslav Nijinsky's original choreographic version, can be considered the beginning of a new era in ballet, it is plausible that it is also in that part of the world, now not so distant anymore, which for over a decade has been showing its traditions, its deep culture linked to the land, nature, rituals, and mysteries of existence to the West.
There is an ideal, content-related link, rather than a formal and artistic one, between the Sacre and non-European cultures: just re-read its concise libretto, recall the mysterious events and no less legendary figures that populate the "four scenes of pagan Russia." And there was a blatant, grotesque tribalism in Nijinsky's heavy and en dehors movements, easily reminiscent of the very energetic and leaping dances, barefoot and rhythmically charged, of African dances.
Naturally, faced with a score of such magnitude and so stripped of its listening and ballet or contemporary dance versions, the problem of how to approach it cannot be merely content-related. Sixteen dancers, white and black, young and determined, follow the music with their bodies, abruptly stop, hands trembling, feet scratching the ground to strengthen themselves: scaling that Himalaya that is the Sacre meant for Momboye retracing especially the countercurrent traces (compared to the Western ballet tradition of 1913) of Nijinsky: it is no coincidence that the dancer-choreographer puts his personal interpretation of Claude Debussy's Prélude à l'Après-midi d'un Faune in the form of a solo of which he is the interpreter and which we could define as an "Afro-Nijinsky solo" before the Sacre. As for the Sacre, the choreographer-dancer says that the sacrifice of the Chosen One reminded him of his own history. History of a people, an ancient ancestor of all human ethnic groups but sacrificed and we know well to which violent and domineering designs. A new empathy was born between bodies and music, a specifically African but stylized encounter. Everything, in the piece that debuted together with the Prélude at the thirteenth Biennale Nationale de Danse du Val de Marne last March, is perfectly regulated: the ensembles, the passionate solos, the quartets like that of the sculptural virgins. The choreography has a precise scenic development with a positive outcome: in the finale, a man comes to the rescue of the Chosen One and prevents her sacrifice. If Africa is the Chosen One, its redemption is near.
