A solo by the choreographer Bintou Dembélé, the first showing of her work in the United States, explored the crossover between hip-hop and diasporic African ritual.
When I asked the man if the seat next to him was taken, he didn’t even open his eyes. That’s when I first wondered whether he might not be just another member of the audience.
Sure enough, when the lights went down and the sound of drums rose, he removed his hoodie, stepped bare chested into the center of the space and began walking in circles. He was Michel Onomo, the dancer performing “Rite de passage || solo 2,” by the French choreographer Bintou Dembélé.
Dembélé has been a major figure in the French hip-hop scene for decades, but she drew wider attention five years ago, when she became the first Black female choreographer to be hired by the Paris Opera. The dances at Performance Space New York this weekend, which closed out L’Alliance New York’s Crossing the Line festival, were the first showings of her work in the United States.
Dembélé, who is of Senegalese heritage, has described her work as an excavation of memory, using the body as a living archive of French enslaved peoples and colonial histories. She and Onomo, also known as Meech, share an interest in the crossover between hip-hop and African diasporic ritual practice. For “Rite,” seats were arranged in concentric rings — the configuration of African circle dances and hip-hop cyphers.
Round and round Onomo went, his circling periodically accelerating and tightening into dervish-like spinning. Occasionally the circling resembled the toprock of a B-boy, and other hip-hop moves entered in here and there: a touch of krump aggression, a bit of house-dance grapevining. Sometimes Onomo opened his chest and arms, tilting back his head in a receptive posture. Other times, he stopped and felt the air with his fingers, letting tremors of energy pass through him with jackhammer force, the shaking blurring his limbs.
Some gestures spoke of resistance or struggle, as when Onomo retreated in a circle with his hands raised in front of him. Later, as he processed haltingly along the space between the outer rings of chairs, his torso bent backward like a tree in a gale. Near the piece’s ending, he snapped backward repeatedly, as if from the impact of a barrage of uppercuts. He also gripped his throat.
This post was originally published on this site be sure to check out more of their content.
