Hip hop and streetdance from Kinshasa, contemporary dance from Brussels, and a German-Israeli DJ mixing international rhythms and local beats. Choreographer Ula Sickle prefers to use these elements to find similarities and connections, rather than to gauge the distance between Africa and Europe. In Kinshasa Electric, choreography is the starting point from which Sickle shows us how the lines between pop culture and high culture, here and there, art and commerce, authenticity and selling out become blurred in a globalised world such as ours.
Like in earlier projects, for Kinshasa Electric Ula Sickle has worked with young Congolese dancers. Sickle focuses on her dancers’ individual backgrounds, the influence of the dance styles from African night life, and on the way their movements are culturally and politically encoded. Kinshasa Electric turns an Utrecht theatre auditorium into an African nightclub.
A SPRING co-production as part of the European network Départs.
On May 24 Kinshasa Electric can be seen with Soapéra as Double Bill #10 Visual dance + Congo beats.
On May 24 there is a 10 Minutes, 10 Questions after the performance.