Sènsa

2018-2023

Performance
In partnership with Melika Ngombe Kolongo (Nkisi) and Ariel Efraim Ashbel
Views of the performance
Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin, Germany, 2023

The temporality of the project itself, and its protean nature (between theatre and exhibition space), already gives the work a particular value. This is, however, a constant in Paul Maheke’s performance practice, as well as in Nkisi’s acoustic research. Both artists are committed to occupation of space with multiple typologies, which gives them the opportunity to accumulate different energies, to create tensions between sound, movement and lights less expected. For Sènsa, this collaboration was completed, and besides, with the artist Ariel Efraim Ashbel, who worked on the lightings.

Lightings which, as is often the case in Maheke’s work, is more absent than present, and which play less their spotlight role and instead create shadows. In Sènsa, which means “to come to light”, “to appear” or “to make sense” in the family of Bantu languages, the work of darkness as a material in its own right is the subject of the choreographic and acoustic work.

Translated extract from the article Danse et énergies cosmiques avec l’artiste Paul Maheke by Cédric Fauq, Numéro Art, 2019, read the full text here