Amala Dianor (France) Siguifin

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Concept and artistic direction: Clara Furey

Choreographed by: Clara Furey, In Association With Be Heintzman Hope, Brian Mendez,  Winnie Ho

Performed by: Baco Lepage-Acosta, Be Heintzman Hope, Brian Mendez

Rehearsal: Lucie Vigneault

Musical composition: Tomas Furey

Technical director and lighting design: Karine Gauthier

Words by: Coral Short

Outside eye: Peter Jasko, Dana Michel, Christopher Willes, Caroline Monnet

Development: A Propic – Line Rousseau & Marion Gauvent

Produced by: Clara Furey

Executive producer: Parbleux

Co-produced by: Atelier de Paris – CDCN (France), CD Spectacles (Gaspé, Canada), Centre Chorégraphique National d’Orléans – Direction Maud le Pladec (France), Festival TransAmériques (Montréal, Canada), La Briqueterie – Centre de Développement Chorégraphique National du Val-de-Marne (Vitry-sur-Seine, France), La Rotonde (Québec, Canada), New Baltic Dance Festival (Vilnius, Lituanie/Lithuania)

Partenaires et soutiens à la création / Partners and support for creation: Parbleux (Montréal, Canada), L’Écart – Art Actuel (Rouyn-Noranda, Canada), Danse à la Carte (Montréal, Canada)

The creation of this work was made possible thanks to the financial support of: Conseil des Arts du Canada, Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Québec, Conseil des Arts de Montréal

Premiere presented on May 26, 2021 at the Espace Danse of the Wilder Building as part of the Festival TransAmériques program.

Duration 55’

Siguifin is first of all a collective choreographic creation which will introduce a new generation of artists, choreographers and dancers, players in a new, prolific artistic landscape, set in West Africa. With this project I intend to promote the talents and diversity of these young dancers from Mali, Burkina Faso and Sénégal.

“Siguifin means “magical monster” in the Bambara language. This new work is the result of a collective choreographic process inspired by the game of Exquisite cadaver (a game involving the drawing of parts of the body, or combining words) to construct a magical, multi-faceted being.

Research led by Naomi Fall on the dancers’ individualities and questions which will develop from this meeting of young people from the three countries, and will then allow Ladji Koné to position the dancers and their personalities against each other through a creative process based on mutual listening and group cohesiveness. Then Alioune Diagne will explore the dancers’ cultures and these 3 neighboring countries, since they are not at all similar.

The texture of each creator’s dancing will be the bridge between all these parts of the work. Based on the mixing of the movement vocabularies, which will have been developed in the creation residencies, I will then create a through line, a canvas which connects yet also respects the three choreographic proposals, building that unique, magical being. I will also be interested in the young artists, channeling this question: what is their present, and what future will they build together in dialogue with the world?”

– Amala Dianor

Amala Dianor

After starting out as a hip hop dancer, Amala Dianor entered the prestigious CNDC school in

Angers (in the class of 2002). He then performed for 10 years as a dancer with a number of

choreographers in very different worlds, including hip hop, neo-classical, contemporary and afro-contemporary. In 2012, he founded his own company, and his dance style and vocabulary were immediately identifiable: sliding from one technique to another with ease and virtuosity, with a hybrid approach to shape, and a poetic approach to the issue of ‘otherness’. Since he created his first soloMan Rec in 2014, he has worked in close collaboration with the electro-soul composer Awir Léon, who has written the original music

for his pieces. He also often collaborates with other choreographic artists, composers, writers and plasticians … In 2019, he created his first major work for nine dancers to whom he taught his special blend of styles and techniques; the work was called The Falling Stardust and is currently touring. In 2020, he prepared at Maison de la Danse in Lyon, the trio Point Zéro, which he will perform with his dancer/ choreographer friends Johanna Faye and Mathias Rassin. During the period of theater closing, he co-writes dance short-movies with the visual artist Grégoire Korganow. He has also committed to training pre-professional dancers in France and then in Western Africa with his project Siguifin, a collective creation for nine dancers and three countries, with the choreographers Ladji Koné, Alioune Diagne and Naomi Fall, and the work will premiere at Suresnes Cités Danse in 2022.