To welcome the new Fellows to the International Research Centre “Interweaving Performance Cultures”, Erika Fischer-Lichte and Christel Weiler convened a meeting at the beginning of the academic year 2010/11 to discuss the Centre’s programme and concepts. The following conversation between Erika Fischer-Lichte and Rustom Bharucha about “interweaving” versus “intercultural” took place on this occasion.

In my view Plato and Africa are not very far from each other.
History, men, have distanced them.
(Soulemayne Mbodj)

In this interview with Gastón Alzate, Souleymane Mbodj discusses several issues relating to the interweaving of performing cultures. These include the unity of literature and the performing arts in Africa; his views on African and Western philosophy; his experience playing Bach’s second prelude in C minor with Lebanese and Armenian musicians; the appropriation processes and cultural fractures resulting from colonization; and the essential value of black music in the Americas for African communities to recover cultural ties shattered by the slave trade. He shares his thoughts on the crossroads and divergences between Africa and the West regarding ways of thinking and conceptions of art. The interview took place in the context of the Kosmopolis International Literature Festival in Barcelona (March 24-26, 2011). Souleymane Mbodj performed alongside Nicolás Buenaventura and Marta Gómez in a show entitled Giving Birth: The Adventure of Thought. The original interview was in French; it was translated into English by Paola Marin.

© association R.B.

In my paper, I would like to look at dance as an art form within the context of intercultural encounters. Discourses on dance often betray an underlying assumption that dance is universal and can be understood by anyone, everywhere – dance as a global player! But even just a cursory glance at the history and the diversity of forms in different cultures reveals that dance performs culturally specific, regional, and local conceptions of the body, of interaction, and of rhythmic staging. On the one hand, dance performances invite (kinesthetic) identification and an inclusive participation; on the other, they can also induce experiences of difference, exclusion, or transgression. What experience, what specific knowledge is embodied in dance, dance techniques, and choreographic performances? To what extent does this describe a “knowledge of the human being” that can be portrayed only performatively – through body movements, interactions, and space-time-models?

In 2006 the famous Greek theatre director and founder of the Attis-Theatre (Athens) Theodoros Terzopoulos presented a short performance entitled Jenin (based on the poem of the same name by Etel Adnan). Terzopoulos staged the performance as a parcours that began in an Arabic coffee shop near his theatre and encompased the entire theatre space, including the foyer, the space beneath the seats, the stage itself, the rear exit, etc. The performance could best be described as a kind of silent dealing with the other that remains unincorporated. Drawing upon this experience, we talked about alterity, encounters and the power of the others.

The Kulturstiftung des Bundes funds collaborations between city theatres in Germany and theatres from abroad. The Mainfranken Theater in Würzburg has started a collaboration with the Burkinan C.I.T.O. Theatre. Kai Tuchmann, currently executive dramaturge of the Mainfranken Theater, reflects on this international collaboration.