Blick Bassy - Bikutsi 3000
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| Tickets 12 € / reduced 6 € |
| French with English and German subtitles. |
| Duration: 75 min No intermission |
| Ground Floor, Hall 2 |
With BIKUTSI 3000, the Cameroonian artist Blick Bassy creates a multi-media event between dance, music, show, video and decolonial historical narrative.
Beginning with the division of the African continent by the colonial powers in 1884/85, the piece unfolds a narrative that expands into to the year 2050, and celebrates dance as an act of resistance.
Based on the tradition of Bikutsi, a traditional Cameroonian music and dance form, it creates an energetic and dense show – a feminist manifesto in which women are the driving force of social and global change. BIKUTSI 3000 is a powerful reflection on one’s own identity, patriarchal power structures and productive ways to free oneself from perpetuating colonial structures.
The Cameroonian musician, writer and director originally staged BIKUTSI 3000 for the Museé Quai Branly in Paris, but his vision goes far beyond that. He wants to create an army of dancers that will carry the Bikutsi into the world. The Humboldt Forum is showing both a guest performance version of the piece with dancers from Cameroon (7 – 10 Dec.) as well as a new version that is being developed together with Afro-Diasporic dancers from Berlin (14 – 17 Dec.).
Blick Bassy is one of Cameroon’s most innovative artists and was already a guest at the Humboldt Forum in 2021 as part of the DURCHLÜFTEN Festival. Even then, the idea of a collaboration arose. He writes and sings in his mother tongue Bassa and often draws his inspiration from childhood memories, which he processes in his music, dance, lyrics, performances and films. After very successful years with the Cameroonian band Macase, he launched his solo career as a musician in 2019. His album and book 1958 is a tribute to the Cameroonian independence fighter Ruben Um Nyobé, who was shot by French colonial troops that year. In 2016, he wrote his first novel, Le Moabi Cinéma, published by Gallimard and awarded the Grand Prix, which celebrates francophone authors from the continent. In spring 2023, he was appointed co-director of the Memory Commission for the reappraisal of the French colonial period in Cameroon by the French President Macron.
Cast
Artistic Director: Blick Bassy
Dancer/Choreographer Cameroon Version:
Isis Jobrelle Abanda,
Beatrice Annette Ntsoli Bouillong,
Germaine Marie Louise Katia Eyi,
Marie Philomène Celeste O’Konor
Dancer/Choreographer Berlin Version:
Angela Katanga,
Lya Kifle,
Doriane Mbenoun,
Duduzile Voigts
Narrator in the Video: Hermine Yollo
Produktion: BB enterprise / Likoda Prod
Surtitles: Lisa Wegner
Design Accessoires: Natela Bakhtadse
Dresser: Luisa Schuster
In collaboration with the Goethe-Institut Cameroon, the Institut Français and supported by the German-French Culture Fund, Bikutsi 3000 premiered in June 2022 at the Musée Quai Branly in Paris as part of the exhibition “Sur la Route des Chefferies du Cameroun”. The production consequently toured through Cameroon and was invited to the festival Africologne in Cologne.