Palabre & Rite de passage // solo II
Bintou Dembélé

North American Premiere

Beginning with Palabre (“A space for speech dedicated to and catered for a community, a village or an assembly. To celebrate oneself, to show off, to mourn, to act with responsibility in the name of the I and/or the We.”) Bintou Dembélé invites Francophone thinkers and artists to collectively demonstrate the power of cultures from the peripheries. Filmmaker Alice Diop (Saint Omer), Mame-Fatou Niang, Director-Founder of the Center for Black European Studies and the Atlantic at Carnegie Mellon University, Audrey Célestine, Associate Professor of History at NYU, Mawogany (Afropunk – Paris) and others come together to find common strengths with New York’s marginalized communities.

Each day culminates in Dembélé’s work Rite de passage // solo II, devised for the dancer Michel “Meech” Onomo and drawing on both artists’ background in hip-hop performance. Developed during a residency at Rome’s Villa Medici, this piece investigates ritual space as a site of body memory, and asks what form a “maroon dance” might take today.

Bintou Dembélé:

Bintou Dembélé is a prominent figure in France’s hip-hop scene, known for her dynamic career as a dancer, choreographer. The first AfroQueer choreographer hired by the Paris Opera—for her groundbreaking reinterpretation of Rameau’s Les Indes galantes, created with Clément Cogitore in 2019 and the conductor Léonardo Garcia Alarçon —she has collaborated throughout her career with renowned artists such as Denis Darzacq or MC Solaar, exploring themes of cultural memory, colonial history, and reappropriation in her choreographic works.

In 2002, Dembélé founded her own structure, Rualité, which has produced six acclaimed productions, blending elements from dance, music, and visual arts. Dembélé has also engaged in academic collaborations and is sought after as a speaker on her artistic approach. She holds associate artist positions at Ateliers Médicis, Carnegie-Mellon University (CBESA), and UChicago (Black Baroque).