This session will be an opportunity to explore and question potential correspondences between the practice of performance art and certain African rituals. Our aim is to study these different practices and their socio-political and spiritual functions.

Taking the specific example of West African rituals, we shall seek to establish correspondences and explore the possible ways of using performance art as a form, or ritual, to restore and heal a sick social body. A body that convulses and releases healing energy, invading spaces and channelling vital energy; a body that transforms and affects the collective conscience.

About Alibeta

Senegalese artist Alibeta is a busy bee, gathering from multiple universes, from theatre, to cinema, to his own art of predilection: music. A writer, composer and performer, his nectar is making a contribution to the universality of language, culture, and representations.

From Afro-jazz to Serer song, from Afro-roots to Mandinka music, this native of Tambacounda plays with the purest West African influences. In complete humility, awestruck by their cosmogonies, he draws on the words of Dogon masters and the wisdom of Serer Saltigue. He cherishes traditions, yet with an eye to the future, whose bold and vigorous voice he can already hear. With him, we transcend unimaginable borders, grasping the full meaning of the word "orality". We accompany him too in a rich contemplation, under the auspices of a quasi-spiritual credo: Africa is the present.