TOT

Radouan Mriziga for Dorothée Munyaneza (Belgium) - AKAL

Akal is the final volume of Radouan Mriziga's trilogy on Amazigh knowledge. Imazighen or 'free people' are the indigenous people of North Africa whose knowledge was oppressed and appropriated yet ignored for centuries by the general narratives of the Mediterranean histories. For Mriziga, the wisdom of the Imazighens contains a seed of a new, more inclusive future. Each part consists of a solo performance around a female mythological figure. In Akal, meaning 'earth', the Belgian-Moroccan choreographer pays homage to the feminine energy that embodies and transmits the culture of the Imazighens: the ancient Egyptian goddess Neith.

Neith is associated with the creation of the world, but also with death, as the one who guides the souls of the departed to the afterlife. She is the goddess of war, the mother of gods, the Great Terrifying One, infamous and worshipped for her immense power and strength. New research tells that Neith was born in lake Tritonis (in modern Libya).

Among the Imazighens, it is the women who pass on their cultural identity to subsequent generations. In the solo, Mriziga celebrates the feminine power of the divine primordial mother Neith, but actually of all Imazighen women, in collaboration with Rwandan choreographer, dancer and singer Dorothée Munyaneza. Rituals, traditional dances, geometry, spoken word, singing, poetry and rap make Akal a magical dance work of great intensity.

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