18.07.2014 (Berlin premiere)
Tanzfabrik Berlin – Wedding
Logobi is a street dance from the Ivory Coast: the dancer says with his movements, just come here, look at me, I’ll be a star soon, but before that I can beat you up.
Street skills and the development of the latest dance trends coincide in the metropolis of Abidjan: the logobi is just one of many dances that are created daily and depict everyday reality. For the Logobi series, director Monika Gintersdorfer and visual artist Knut Klaßen worked with the Ivorian dancers and choreographers Gotta Depri and Franck Edmond Yao alias Gadoukou la Star. The parts Logobi 01 (Gotta Depri and Hauke Heumann), Logobi 02 (Gotta Depri and Gudrun Lange), and Logobi 03 (Laurent Chétouane and Franck Edmond Yao alias Gadoukou la Star), Logobi 4 (Jochen Roller and Franck Edmond Yao alias Gadoukou la Star) and Logobi 5 (Richard Siegal and Franck Edmond Yao alias Gadoukou la Star) were created.
Gotta Depri and Franck Edmond Yao alias Gadoukou la Star grew up with the street dances in Abidjan and have since developed them into glamorous stage performances at home and abroad. In the choreography “Logobi” they show, together with various colleagues from the European contemporary dance scene, lines of connection and demarcation between current Ivorian dances, traditional African dance and the European dance development of the 20th and 21st centuries. They demonstrate why, for example, the dance Logobi, even if it looks urban and modern, is closer to the rain dance from the village than to European contemporary dance, which has been increasingly taught and practised in Abidjan for about 10 years. The two dancers show how they use their bodies in a national-African and an international market. In addition, they convey the different contexts in their access conditions, traditions and aesthetics. How is dance suited as a form of engagement with the changes of a modern society? How does it function as an opportunity for professional advancement? What kind of working conditions do dancers enter into in Africa, and what opportunities are offered to them in Europe, for example at the André Heller Circus “Afrika!Afrika!”, in the context of the modern European contemporary dance scene or in the African milieu that has organised an active club system in all European metropolises.
Artists
Gintersdorfer/Klaßen mit Jochen Roller and Franck Edmond Yao alias Gadoukou la Star
Premiere 06.11.2009, Dance Congress 2009, Kampnagel Hamburg
A production by Gintersdorfer/Klaßen in collaboration with FFT Düsseldorf, Kampnagel Hamburg, Sophiensaele Berlin
Supported by funds from the NATIONAL PERFORMANCE NETWORK with funds from the Tanzplan Deutschland of the German Federal Cultural Foundation
In the context of “Cases of Folklore: regional dance and popular dissolution of boundaries”.
Salon in preparation for the 8th Tanznacht Berlin 18 and 19 July 2014.
Idea and concept Heike Albrecht (Artistic Director 8th Tanznacht Berlin) and Franz Anton Cramer (dance academic and publicist).
Supported by the Hauptstadtkulturfonds
www.gintersdorferklassen.org