L’Opéra du villageois

CAMEROUN

DIRECTED BY ZORA SNAKE

What is an opera? In this performance, Zora Snake proposes to turn our definitions and perceptions of art and its history on their head, by paying tribute to the artistic and performative traditions invented over thousands of years in African villages. The dances of kounga, nka’a and sondap question the way we think about artistic freedom today, and the way the arts circulate between continents. These practices, and the sacred objects associated with them, are all riches despoiled by colonisation, just like the gold and salt at the centre of the performance.
Zora Snake performs a burial rite to the rhythm of the words of the poet Aimé Césaire and the flute of Maddy Mendly Silva.
He embodies the ghost of these despoiled works, in dialogue with the visible world in a space that is constantly being adapted, an invisible museum where the work regains its power of expression. This new politico-religious ritual highlights the silence of the ancestors and the way in which the after-effects of their dispossession resonate in our bodies.

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