In collaboration with composer Khyam Allami, Dorothée Munyaneza / Compagnie Kadidi in Toi, Moi, Tituba… starts from the body to build a physical, living and sensitive archive. Bringing together experiences born out of dispersion, she transforms her body into both a fragment and a whole. A body that delves into a past marked by suffering and pain, in order to celebrate, heal and commemorate. A motionless body, in an attempt to prevent oblivion and erasure from taking over.
As always, everything starts from encounters, encounter with Elsa Dorlin, the philosopher, encounter with her text Me, you, us: I, Tituba and the Ontology of the Trace that I enjoyed setting to movement in 2021 as part of L’ADN Dance Living Lab at the National Theatre of Chaillot, and then the reunion with Tituba and Maryse Condé’s line of thought.
A story-genealogy, published in 1986, I, Tituba: Black Witch of Salem gave life, from a few lines discovered in the minutes of a trial for witchcraft, to Tituba, woman, black and witch, at a time when it was not right to be either of them. A work-resistance, that of Maryse Condé, who has never ceased to give back a voice, a flesh, a story to what has been erased, silenced and bruised.
Everything is there. How to resonate the breaths, lives and dreams of those men and those women whose identities and very existences were denied and crushed by the slave trade and the colonial system? Through words? Through the body, perhaps, since I am a dancer? Through the voice that inhabits space, songs that speak to those who are there and those who are far away? How to move my body and my story so as to make audible, visible and palpable the traces of those extinguished, gone unnoticed, ignored or forgotten, how to relate to my own history which no written trace testifies, except perhaps for a few historical erasures to use Elsa Dorlin’s words in the colonial administrative archives? Is it possible to make lineage, to relate for the time a dance lasts, those that history has forgotten with so much application, with our lives, but also with those who are yet to be born?
– Dorothée Munyaneza
Myriade is a rich and uplifting explosion of music, film and performance — a curatorial platform in which Dorothée Munyaneza convenes a myriad of voices, gestures, rhythms and stories to resonate at Short Theatre 2026. Munyaneza has invited artists who share her search for poetry and who incessantly invent other ways of inhabiting the world, for a programme that includes a screening, a concert and a performance.
Alongside Dorothée Munyaneza, Myriade will also be activated by Except this time nothing returns from the ashes by Asmaa Jama & Gouled Ahmed and a concert from Gildaa.
Dorothée Munyaneza is a multi-disciplinary artist using music, song, text and movement to deal with rupture as a dynamic force. Munyaneza draws from real stories seizing body, memory and our times to create a space of resonance. Originally from Rwanda, Munyaneza moved to England in 1994 where she trained at the Jonas Foundation in London and studied music and social sciences in Canterbury, before moving to Marseille, France. Starting from 2006, her collaborations have included François Verret, Radouan Mriziga, Alain Mahé, Jean-François Pauvros, Robyn Orlin, Ko Murobushi, Nan Goldin, Stéphanie Coudert, Rachid Ouramdane, Maud Le Pladec, Alain Buffard, Maya Mihindou and Ben LaMar Gay. In 2013, she founds in Marseille the Kadidi Company. Associate artist at the Théâtre la Ville – Paris from 2018 to 2021, Dorothée is now associated with the Théâtre National de Chaillot and the Maison de la Danse and the Dance Biennale in Lyon. In 2024, she was awarded the Salavisa European Dance Award at the Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon.
artistic direction, performance and live music Dorothée Munyaneza
music composition Khyam Allami
costumes Stéphanie Coudert
from a text by Elsa Dorlin
light design Marine Le Vey
sound management Aude Besnard
light management Anna Geneste
production Virginie Dupray – cie Kadidi, assisted by Louise Mutabazi
Dorothée Munyaneza / Compagnie Kadidi is present at ST26 with the support of Nuovi Mecenati – Fondazione franco-italiana di sostegno alla creazione contemporanea
ph. Dajana Lothert