Back to Kidal

Back to Kidal is an intense encounter between choreographer Serge Aimé Coulibaly and singer and musician Patrick Kabré, an inspiring voice of the contemporary African music scene. With Faso Danse Théâtre, dance, live music, text and video merge into a form of physical theatre that gets under your skin.

The performance centres around the question of how the more recent past of African peoples can be told. Coulibaly explores the legacy of slavery, colonialism and cultural erasure – using the human body, music, and through shared presence.

The piece is loosely inspired by the documentary *Soundtrack to a Coup d’État* (2024), about the assassination of Patrice Lumumba and the role of jazz as a political instrument during the Cold War. That history resonates in the background, where music becomes both a tool of power and a dissenting voice.

-|-The shared language of the performance is the blues. This musical style, with roots in West Africa, travelled with the enslaved people to the Americas and grew into a universal expression of pain, dignity and resistance. Patrick Kabré has been working with this sound, the Sahel blues, for years. His voice is warm and rich, alternating effortlessly between tradition and the present.

The lyrics by Koulsy Lamko, sung by Odile Sankara, give voice to the intensity of the music and movement. The compositions by Yvan Talbot (Doogoo D) add structure. With a keen eye for detail and timing, he weaves voices, sounds and rhythms into a single, ever-evolving whole.

Seven performers translate this concept into a physical, powerful choreography. Part of the audience sits on stage, close to the performers. In this way, Back to Kidal becomes a shared experience that does not explain but invites you to empathise and reflect on freedom and the future.

Serge Aimé Coulibaly (1972) is a choreographer, dancer and artistic director from Burkina Faso. He heads the company Faso Danse Théâtre and works at the intersection of contemporary dance, theatre and live music. His performances are physically powerful, rhythmic and strongly dramaturgically structured. In his work, Coulibaly explores themes such as colonialism, migration, power, identity and collective memory, always from an African perspective that is embedded in the world of today. He combines tradition with contemporary forms and works internationally with performers from various disciplines. His work tours festivals and theatres worldwide and is renowned for its raw energy, political acuity and poetic expressiveness.