Sur les traces de Dinozord

Faustin Linyekula created The Dialogue Series iii: Dinozord in Vienna in 2006. This commission for American director Peter Sellars’ New Crowned Hope Festival was later also shownin Avignon, at

Springdance in Utrecht and in Paris Quartier d’été. Sur les traces de Dinozord is a remake of this performance, which is now on show for the first time in the Netherlands, with a brand new cast of young dancers. 

It is now thirteen years later. The original artistic team is now spread all over the world – as political refugees, artists or both – travelling between the Congo, France and Sweden. In this performance they return to the ruins of Kisangani, Democratic Republic of Congo, previously known as Zaïre, the Belgian Congo and the Congo Free State. They go in search of a new story, new hope under the surface of names and places. 

Antoine Vumilia Muhindo, a Congolese actor, writer, director and former political prisoner has been involved since its beginning in 2006 and joined the cast in 2012 when Linyekula revisited the first version. Among other themes, his story addresses his involvement in the Kabila resistance movement against Mobutu Sese Seko, the dictator who ruled the Congo for thirty-two years and during his reign changed the country’s name to Zaïre, and his sentence to death after Kabila’s murder by one of his body guard. 

The cast includes singer Hlengiwe Lushaba, dancers Yves Mwamba and Jeannot Kumbonyeki and actor Papy Maurice Mbwiti. In addition to the many movement scenes – solos and duets – the performers drag a red coffin over the stage, from which papers are continually falling. These are the notes of Richard Kabako, poet and close childhood friend of Linyekula. Kabako was a young man with great writing ambitions who died of bubonic plague. As a tribute, Linyekula named his company and studio after his friend: Studios Kabako. The stories and memories give him a posthumous presence in the performance. Also absent (although very much alive; performing in the parade performance Parlement Debout at this festival) is the person who gave his name to the show: Dinozord, ‘the last of his kind’. This Congolese dancer, who appeared in the original in 2006, speaks here only via projected text. 

Which stories stick and which disappear? We should not forget where we come from. Dinozord’s memories and Richard Kabako are kept alive in Linyekula’s Sur les traces de Dinozord, his ultimate attempt to create a new story from the ruins of a country, built on their shared lives.