Symposium: Palabre/s en mode marron
The Neilma Sidney Theatre
December 6 – 7 | 12pm
Free with RSVP
Performance: Rite de passage || solo 2
The Keith Haring Theatre
December 6 – 7 | 7:30pm
Tickets
Artist Bintou Dembélé presents Palabre/s en mode marron, a gathering of artists, academics, activists, and more with connections to Paris and the French West Indies. This program will feature a day of exchanges and encounters with conversations, film screenings, readings, DJ sets, and workshops, culminating in a dance performance by Dembélé, performed by Michel “Meech” Onomo. Palabre offers a dedicated space for artists’ voices, conflict resolution and community engagement while cultivating diasporic exchange among scholars, stakeholders, and activists. Working collaboratively with Performance Space and L’Alliance New York to bring communities together, Dembélé demonstrates the multifaceted nature of performance.
Dembélé’s work explores ritual and corporeal memories, interrogates gender dynamics, and addresses both individual and collective wounds of the past. Palabre/s is an iteration of a series she has presented several times in the past, which, with the blessing of the Bushnengue elders of French Guiana, allowing her to invent a ‘Maroon Dance,’ a memory of marronnage – of descendants of Africa, the Americas and the Caribbean who created new, free societies on the margins of slavery and colonization.
As part of the invitation, Bintou Dembélé also presents a movement-based work, Rite de passage || solo 2, that ends each day and blends together this ritual practice of palabre with the essence of Hip Hop. They assume the role of MC and orchestrate the flow of speech within the space, inviting vulnerability and fragility and enabling participants to find common ground and collectively reimagine new narratives. As an artist, Dembélé unearths the memories buried in bodies, souls and minds, as a living archive of another point of view on histories of French enslaved people and colonial histories more generally.
Friday, December 6
Arrivals and Welcome
12:30 – 1pm, Open Room; Keith Haring Theater
Palabre 1: With Mawongany, Audrey Célestine, and Bintou Dembélé
1 – 4pm, Keith Haring Theater
Film Screening and Conversation: Here Ends the World We’ve Known with Anne-Sophie Nanki
4:30-5:30pm, Keith Haring Theater
Dinner and Discussion with BEM Books
5:30-7pm, Open Room / Neilma Sidney Theater
Performance: Rite de passage || solo 2
7:30 -8:30pm, Keith Haring Theater
Saturday, December 7
Arrivals and Welcome
12-12:30pm, Open Room; Keith Haring Theater
Palabre 2: With Stefanie Batten Bland, nora chipaumire, and Bintou Dembélé
12:30 – 2:30pm, Keith Haring Theater
We The Youth – Keith Haring Lecture with mayfield brooks
2-3pm, The Neilma Sidney Theater
Palabre 3: With Mame-Fatou Niang and Bintou Dembélé
3-4pm, Keith Haring Theater
Film Screening: Vanille
3:30-4pm, The Neilma Sidney Theater
Palabre 4: With C Riley Snorton and Bintou Dembélé
4-6pm, Keith Haring Theater
Performance: Rite de passage || solo 2
7:30 -8:30pm, Keith Haring Theater
DJ set and dance party with UBABU
8:30-10:30pm, Keith Haring Theater
This project is co-presented by L’Alliance New York, as part of Crossing The Line Festival.
About L’Alliance New York
L’Alliance New York is an independent, not-for-profit organization committed to providing its audience and students with engaging French language classes and audacious multi-disciplinary programming that celebrates the diversity of francophone cultures and creativity around the world. A welcoming and inclusive community for all ages and all backgrounds, L’Alliance New York is a place where people can meet, learn, and explore the richness of our heritages and share discoveries. L’Alliance New York strives to amplify voices and build bridges from the entire francophone world to New York and beyond.
About Crossing The Line Festival
Crossing The Line is a citywide festival that engages international artists and New York City audiences in artistic discovery and critical dialogue to re-imagine the world around us. Crossing The Line is produced by L’Alliance New York in partnership with leading cultural institutions.
