Création 2020
For Serge Aimé Coulibaly, a Burkinabé-Belgian choreographer, dance is a social commitment. Through a
powerful and universal language, he questions the world and shares his thoughts with an international audience.
If his inspiration has its roots in Africa, his influences are multiple. Therefore, each period of creation unfolds on
the African continent as well as in Europe.
Serge Aimé Coulibaly’s dance is contemporary, is anchored in emotion and brings hope. It is through this prism
that he approaches complex themes by infusing them with positive energy.
After having investigated a popular uprising (Nuit Blanche à Ouagadougou), after having explored what
commitment to a better world requires of the individual (Kalakuta Republik), after having scrutinised our
disdainful attitude towards the history of migratory peoples through a few myths of West African origin (Kirina),
in WAKATT – a creation that has been in preparation since 2018 – Serge Aimé Coulibaly and Magic Malik
question the present time.
The pre-COVID19 world reality already offered enough substance for this questioning : the fear of the other
that we feel is emerging everywhere, nationalism, terrorism, ecological evolutions and the youth movement for
the climate, the position and voice of minorities …
Then the pandemic and the global regulations to control it not only influenced the agenda and the economics of
performance creation and touring, they reinforced the basic questioning: how can we talk about the present
time?
WAKATT presents us with a humanity in transition. In this work, Serge Aimé Coulibaly looks at the nature of the
human being, his “natural instinct” to survive and create a future for himself. At a time when walls are being
erected between peoples, when nationalisms are gorged with the rejection of the other, when masks are being
worn and distances are being established, WAKATT encourages resistance and openness towards a common and
generous future.
Jacques Derrida, 1990.
“A future that would not be monstrous would not be a future, it would be a predictable, calculable and programmable
tomorrow. Any experience open to the future is prepared or is preparing to welcome the monstrous newcomer, to
welcome him, that is to say to grant hospitality to what is absolutely foreign, but also, it must be said, to try to domesticate
him, that is to say to bring him into the house, and to make him take habits, to make us take new habits.”