A Lesson of Darkness
AgendaCalendar
2025
With A Lesson of Darkness Lecture-performance, Betty Tchomanga invites the public to travel inside her worknotes.
Based on her latest creation, Lessons of Darkness, Betty Tchomanga proposes a new form in which her research, reflection and questions cohabit with the dances, songs and ghost-figures present in the piece. In his book A Decolonial ecology, Malcolm Ferdinand, PHD in political science, proposes a new approach to the ecological question, linking it to colonial History. The figure of the slave ship appears as a political metaphor for a world marked by relations of domination. The “Ship of the world”, on the other hand, suggests a different kind of History of the world and the Earth, where beliefs, thoughts and imaginations could meet and circulate. This metaphor resonates with Betty Tchomanga's research into the voodoo cult and the figure of Mami Wata. Like Malcolm Ferdinand's “Ship of the World”, both her choreographic work and this lecture-performance are based on the circulation, cohabitation and juxtaposition of images, imaginations, and beliefs from dominant and dominated cultures.
The choreographer and performer intertwine sometimes words, archive images, travel stories and choreographic excerpts, making visible the path that leads to the production of a work. Throughout this lecture-performance, she invites the audience to make the connection between disparate elements here brought together in a single corpus.
