2025
Kizazi
STÉPHANIE MWAMBA
“As the M23 rebels reached the centre of Goma on the morning of 27 January 2025, a massive prison breakout took place at the Munzenze Prison, allowing around 4,000 male inmates to escape. The female wing was attacked. All women were raped and then burned alive as the entire section was deliberately set on fire.
An estimated 150 to 200 women and children perished.
The exact number of victims and their identities remain unknown.”
A body folded in half, undulating in a constrained space...
Stéphanie Mwamba whose family has to leave Kasai too escape rebel movements, was born and raised in Goma, DRC. She fled Goma and DRC in February to escape another rebel movement. Her story has been shaped by the violence of a country that has been falling for apart for decades.
In this first solo, she explores the womb, Kizaziin Swahili...
The origin of life, a passageway between worlds, the womb also embodies the historical injustices inflicted on women's bodies: sexual violence, social assignment, unequal access to education, health, artistic and political expression.
Kizazi is a space of struggle, of memory, of rebirth, a space of resilience, a space of infinite strength and pain.
What does it mean to grow up a woman in the Eastern part of the DRC, in a region where for more than 15 years, the female body has become a territory to be occupied, a war zone?
In July 2024, Stéphanie and other young women and activists came to the aid of the women in Munzenze prison in Goma; a few months later they were raped and burned alive.
Alone on stage, the dancer draws on the memory of the female body, of all those who came before, on the organic rhythms of these bodies, pulsations, contractions, undulations, but also of plants, roots, branches, sap.
Between sensory improvisation and structured composition, an instinctive gesture takes root, at once harsh and fluid, tenacious and irremediably anchored to the earth, to the breaths of origins.
In Kizazi, dance becomes a political and poetic act, a restorative act, an act of emancipation. It celebrates free and powerful women, bearers of a fairer society.
In Kizazi, dance becomes a celebration for the absent, an act of memory, a political and poetic act, an act of reparation, an act of emancipation. It celebrates free and powerful women, bearers of a fairer society.
ARTISTIC DIRECTION AND PERFORMANCE
Stéphanie Mwamba [+]
EXTERNAL EYE
Abdoulaye Konate, Nadia Beugré [+], Virginie Dupray [+]
MUSIC
Skill Sawasawa
PRODCTION
cie Ochula, Libr’Arts / Virginie Dupray, assisted by Noura Soumahoro
WITH SUPPORT FROM
École des Sables, Amizero Company Kigali, French Embassy in Ivory Coast
DURATION: 25 min
Past présentations / work in progress
→ April 26, 2025, Dialaw festival, Toubab Dialaw
→ May 31, 2025, Kaay Fecc festival, Dakar
→ June 28, 2025, Duo-Solo Festival, Saint-Louis
Première
→ October 31-Novembre 1, 2025, Birds at Peripheries, Spielart Festival, Munich