MACKENZY BERGILE Autothérapie: Unbolting colonial statues from our consciousness

In the organizer's words:

EN

Stage work about the collective history of colonized bodies.

Few artists are as diverse in their work as Mackenzy Bergile: The self-taught artist is a dancer, choreographer, composer and author, and works as a model and photographer. He worked as a dancer, musician and composer on Saïdo Lehlouh's stage overwhelming EARTHBOUND (Kampnagel 2022) and TÉMOIN (Sommerfestival 2024), among others, and incorporates the cultural influences of his home countries Haiti and France into his own works. With AUTOTHÉRAPIE, he presents a world premiere that emerged from his intensely poetic museum performance, which he presented at last summer's festival together with dancer Mayvis William in the MK&G's Hall of Mirrors. In the solo work now developed for the stage, he interweaves elements of hip-hop, jazz, ballet and traditional Haitian dances to create an expressive and sensitive movement language that combines memory, trance and resistance. Inspired by Haitian spiralism, a literary movement that combines cyclical storytelling with political awareness, the result is a reflection on colonial influences and their inscriptions in the body and history, which powerfully brings the emancipatory potential of dance to the stage.

EN

A stage work about the collective history of colonized bodies.

Few artists navigate disciplines with as much fluidity as Mackenzy Bergile. The Franco-Haitian self-taught artist is at once a dancer, choreographer, composer, writer, model, and photographer, and works at the intersection of performance, theory, and postcolonial critique. He has collaborated as a dancer, musician, and composer on Saïdo Lehlouh's acclaimed works EARTHBOUND (Kampnagel 2022) and TÉMOIN (Summer Festival 2024), and now presents the world premiere of AUTOTHÉRAPIE. Developed as a solo, the piece extends his museum performance shown at the 2024 Summer Festival at MK&G with dancer Mayvis William. In AUTOTHÉRAPIE, Mackenzy Bergile deliberately confronts the codified, hierarchical vocabulary of court dances with the subversive force of resistance dances born in clandestinity - notably traditional Haitian and Afro-diasporic forms. Inspired by Haitian spiralism - a literary aesthetic grounded in circularity and political consciousness - Bergile explores diasporic bodies as living archives, as sites of rupture but also of transformation. With AUTOTHÉRAPIE, dance becomes a powerful space for repair, reclamation and resistance.

Price information:

9-22 Euro (50% reduced with festival ticket)