We are home from Burkina Faso, and while the air is chilly and the snow is not red sand I am happy to be here.
The last few days in Burkina were mostly spent in the studio, marrying the music and dance at last. It’s a wonderful feeling when the two art forms start to line up. In our last run through on Saturday afternoon I was conscious to savour the environment the work was created in. The warmth, the children watching through the open door, the visual artist working on the other side of the space and of course the beautiful African wood under my feet.
My French is still terrible but Bienvenue and I have found a way to understand each other. Converse is a testament to the power of communication through the body. This creative process has been an exercise in giving up control, letting the work evolve through a long series of responses and counter responses. Most days we worked for 6-8 hours with short breaks for ‘fuel’ as Bienvenue would say, usually bananas and ground nuts! There’s undeniably something encoded in the day to day manners of the Burkinabè. Like Bienvenue the average person we talked to placed great importance on acknowledging and taking the time to greet and ask about one another.
Most of the collaborative work John did to create the score was done with Ndoula-speaking griot musician Bema ‘Balafon’ Konaté and members of his family. I think they enjoyed themselves and one another’s company building the layers that would make up the score. This meant travelling around Ouaga on motorcycles to get the various instruments and musicians involved on tape. There were plenty of good ideas to choose from that’s for sure.
Bienvenue arrives tonight and will go directly from the airport to our first rehearsal at the theatre. We are very lucky to have made this work in Burkina and be performing it in Canada, to have had the opportunity to be plunged into each others’ worlds in back-to-back order. Now that the project has unfolded so positively and fruitfully, and staging starts today, I can’t imagine it any other way. Besides I will always jump at a chance to be in West Africa, I am admittedly in love.
