Dorothée Munyaneza
umuko
- 14.11 — 15.11 2025
- Performances
- Culturgest - Auditório Emílio Rui Vilar
- €16 (See discounts)
- ages 6+
- 1H10 min
- In Kinyarwanda
Under the umuko tree, a meeting of generations, memories, and futures in bloom.
It's been 28 years since I moved away from my native land.
28 years that I live in new lands.
28 years that I root myself elsewhere.
28 years that I haven't forgotten umuko, that tree that illuminates my childhood. That tree that resonates only in the native language. That bright red tree, earth red, which links me to what begins, to what is lost and found again, when I return, to what continues...
At the heart of the Rwandan choreographer Dorothée Munyaneza’s new creation stands umuko, an ancestral tree with vivid red flowers, traditionally seen as a healer and a guardian of stories.
Together with five young Rwandan artists — dancers, musicians, and poets — Munyaneza celebrates the creativity, audacity, and freedom of a new generation. This generation, born after the genocide against the Tutsis in Rwanda, that tore the African country apart in 1994, carries the memory of a shared heritage while dreaming of the future and resisting the precariousness of everyday life.
umuko is a work of joy, love, and solidarity.
Post-show talk with Dorothée Munyaneza and Sarah Lewis-Cappellari (in English) on 15 Nov.
Credits
Artistic direction and performance Dorothée Munyaneza in collaboration with / performed by Jean Patient Nkubana, Impakanizi, Cedrick Mizero, Abdoul Mujyambere Costumes Stéphanie Coudert Music Impakanizi, Jean Patient Nkubana, Michael Makembe Light & scenography Camille Duchemin Production Virginie Dupray, assisted by Nouria Tirou / cie Kadidi Sound management Camille Frachet Light management Camille Faye Coproduction Dance Reflflections by Van Cleef & Arpels, Chaillot Théâtre national de la danse, Maison de la danse Lyon - Pôle européen de création, PACT ZollVerein Essen, Julidans Amsterdam, deSingel Antwerp, Tanz im August – HAU Hebbel am Ufer Berlin funded by the Capital Cultural Fund, Kaai Theater Brussels, Oriente-Occidente Festival Rovereto Supported by Institut français du Rwanda and Goethe Institut (Franco-German Fund for Culture), DRAC Provence- -Alpes-Côted’Azur / French Ministry of Culture
Presented in Lisbon with support from Common Stories, funded by the European Union; MaisFRANÇA and Institut français Paris
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Trailer
Based in Marseille, Dorothée Munyaneza is a multi-disciplinary artist using music, song, text and movement to deal with rupture as a dynamic force. Munyaneza draws from real stories seizing body, memory and our times to create a space of resonance. Her style of creating and performing on stage is directly inspired by what life has so intensely given her. Her artistic research draws from the diversity of her cultural heritage – her extended family in Rwanda, the experience of the 14 years spent in London, her move to Paris followed by her settling in Marseille -, but...