Take a seat on Rosa Parks’s bus! An interactive performance. Audience members are invited to gather around objects connected to the history and memory of struggles against segregation: Rosa Parks’s umbrella, Martin Luther King’s hat, James Baldwin’s jacket, the dress of a soul singer: Aretha Franklin, Mahalia Jackson or Nina Simone? Perhaps you will recognize them?
By touching an object, they awaken sounds from the past, along with episodes and fragments from the lives of major figures in the struggle for civil rights in the United States. Through interactivity, a moment unfolds combining theater, dance and song with memories of an era, a journey of resistance and its present-day echoes. You are invited to experience a moment of living memory, discovering evocative soundscapes from different periods of history, as well as the words, gestures and actions of activist Rosa Parks and her contemporaries. For several years, the Le Makila company has been developing artistic work that listens to the memories of major female figures—most often artists, but also thinkers and activists, both witnesses to and builders of their time: Isadora Duncan, Camille Claudel, Frida Kahlo, Calamity Jane, Cesaria Evora, Maria Callas, Billie Holiday, Marlène Dietrich, Coccinelle, Joséphine Baker, Nikki de Saint Phalle, Rosa Parks, etc. This approach to the lives of illustrious women seeks to resonate with our lives here and now, regardless of our circumstances, gender, age, or social, cultural or religious background. Memory and history belong to all human beings. Cultivating these female legacies through our artistic work is our contribution to Matrimoine. The performance presented as part of the Matrimoine Days draws on excerpts from Rosa 08'46 *The Rosa 08'46 project receives support from Artcena - Aide Nationale à la Création, the Accueil studio short-residency program at the Centre Nationale de la Danse, residencies hosted by CPAnim' Pina Bausch and Bessie Smith, and the support of the Mairie de Paris. From Rosa Parks’s famous actions in the 1950s to the murder of George Floyd in 2020, it explores several aspects of the memories of anti-racist struggles.
Source: paris.fr — photo: ©AliceHERBRETEAU