Kenbe, Amour, Colère, Folie: Improvisations for Love (2009-2011)
Who decides which bodies can love across differences? How do women love differently in inter-culturalism? How do women hold onto love despite living with the anger and insanity of our current moment? This work draws upon Haitian novelist Marie Chauvet's once banned novel Amour, Colère, Folie to explore how we love, hold onto love and react to living in difficult times. On another level, this dance inquires into the complications of loving and living amidst intersected realities that are not always easy to endure. The work is an act of feminine resistance to the realities — often hierarchically ordered and gendered realities — that create injustice directly affecting women.
Choreography: Celia Weiss Bambara
Dance: Celia Weiss Bambara
Music: cut and organized by Celia Weiss Bambara
Lighting Design: Chris Wooten
Length: 30 minutes
This work has been performed in Chicago, San Francisco, Michigan, North Carolina, Trinidad and Abidjan, at venues including Links Hall 30/30 Festival, Haitian Dance Music and Arts Festival, Un Pas Vers L'Avant Festival, Epiphany Episcopal Church, Republic of Sydenham, the Drucker Center, Outerspace, Praxis Place, Jane Addams Hull House (University of Illinois at Chicago), Alliance Française in Chicago and the Goethe Institut. It was in part produced or aided by the Marquette City Arts and Culture Council, the Outerspace Collective, a residency in Trinidad at the Makeda Thomas Roots and Wings Dance and Performance Institute and another at Alice Yard. The work was performed in Abidjan due to a successful Kickstart that permitted it to be toured in 2012. The work was performed at UNC Asheville at the BELK theater in 2015 with a talk balk on process, improvisation and making.