La Danse des sept tours (the seven tower dance) is a choreographic and theatrical duet directly inspired by French novelist and playwright Laurent Gaudé's poem Le Chant des sept tours (in De Sang et de Lumière, Actes Sud, 2017). Captured by the lyricism and force of this text recounting the human tragedy of the slave trade, choreographer Florence Gnarido undertook to deliver a choreographic adaptation of it while retaining an important place for the words, with the collaboration of Beninese actress Florisse Adjanohoun.

The piece is a reflection on memory: those of the captives that seven towers - for the women - and nine for the men, around the tree of oblivion, aimed to erase; that of a country, Benin, which played an active part in the triangular trade. It is also connected with the  memory revived by the return, in 2021, of  the former Kingdom of Dahomey's 26 royal treasures, looted during the colonial conquest and displayed in a masterly exhibition in Cotonou in 2022, giving the opportunity to  hundreds of thousands of Beninese to rediscover its patrimony..

To create this piece, Florence Gnarigo researched the history of slavery and heard from the inhabitants of Ouidah, one of the main points of embarkation to the Americas. The scenography and choreographic material suggest the relationships of domination that persist between cultures in Benin. Originally from the North, the choreographer's costume recalls the heavy toll of slavery borne by the people of this region, raided and sold by the kingdoms of the South. A daily rural object, the calabash represents this collected memory, a fragile funerary urn that strikes at the heart and against oblivion. In addition to the dances of Rwanda and South Africa, there are the ceremonial dances of the Waama, Somba and Ditamaris, peoples of the North still sometimes considered by those of the South as savage or devoid of civilization.

A tribute to the millions of African slaves brutally torn from their homeland, the piece ends like a ritual: in the middle of a circle of statuettes symbolizing the souls of the deportees, the dance, testimony to their painful history, delivers them from oblivion. Every time I dance this show," says the choreographer, "I have the impression that, in the end, I free the spirits of the slaves, and their souls fly away in peace: their struggle will not have been in vain, for the memory of their tragedy lives on.

Premiere: December 12, 2022, Institut Français du Togo, Lomé.

2023 tour : Ghana, Bénin, Togo.

Recorded on december 7th,  Espace Fiôhomé, Lomé, Togo.

Source : Interview of Florence Gnarigo by Anne Décoret-Ahiha, June 16th 2023, Cotonou (Benin), December, 8th 2023, Lome (Togo)

Born in 1992 in Natitingou, northern Benin, Florence Gnarigo obtained her DT (Technician in sciences and techniques of art degree), specializing in piano music, from ESMA, a secondary school in Abomey-Calavi, on the outskirts of Cotonou. In 2017, she joined the fourth graduating class of the Irène Tassembedo Dance School (E.D.I.T.) in Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso), from which she graduated four years later. In 2018, she took part in the "Danse noire" workshop at the Ecole des sables in Senegal. She then joined Irène Tassembedo's company and danced in the trio Des maux de nous (Carthage danse, June 2019), a piece about the wounds and suffering of young women faced with early motherhood. She also appears in Yiiki! Lève toi! a creation for 12 performers, initially programmed as part of Saison Africa 2020 but performed in September 2021 as part of the "C'est comme ça" festival, at l'Echangeur - CDCN Château Thierry (France). On this occasion, she presents her first solo, Etats de choc, which she began creating during a residency at the Centre chorégraphique Multicorps in Cotonou, in April 2021.

In July 2021, she was selected by Togolese choreographer Kossivi Afiadegnigban for his piece Vonvonli, which toured in Africa in 2022 - 2023.

At the same time, she embarks on a new creation: La Danse des sept tours, in collaboration with actress Florisse Adjanohon (co-production Institut Français du Bénin, Togo Créatif).

In May 2023, Congolese choreographer Delavallet Bidiefono invited her to the Centre de Développement Chorégraphique Baning'art he had created just outside Brazzaville, to reprise the solo Sorcières Kimpa Vita, evoking the historical figure of Kimpa Vita, a young African martyr whose fate was similar to that of Joan of Arc.

Source : Interview of Florence Gnarigo by Anne Décoret-Ahiha, june 10th 2021, June 23th 2023, Cotonou (Benin)

Florisse Adjanohoun is an actress, storyteller, director and cultural entrepreneur from Benin. She began acting as an amateur in 1984, and ten years later, with four other actors, founded Théâtre Wassangari, dedicated to theatrical storytelling. In 2000, she founded her own company, Parole en scène, dedicated to contemporary creation and committed theater.

Over the course of her thirty-year career, which has taken her to African, European and American theatres, Florisse Adjanohoun has collaborated with numerous directors: Odile Sankara, Tola Koukoui, René Loyon, Jean-Michel Coulon, Philippe Adrien, Rodrigue Norman, Eric Mapuya, Vangdar Dorsuma, Jean Lambert-wild.... She has appeared in numerous films and TV series (Le Champ des oubliés, by Roger Gbekou, L'Orage africain, by Sylvestre Amoussou, Le Voyage des oubliés, by Senami Kpètèhogbé...) and won several awards: Prix Canal + 2012 for best actress in Le Prix à payer, by Maxime Tchincoun; Prix Canal + 2014 for best female performer in Les Avalés du grand bleu, by the same director.

Her play Atakoun (1998) won the 1999 Benin Golden Awards for Best Performance, and in the same year received the Best Text Award at the Journées théâtrales de Carthage (JTC).  At the 22nd edition of this Tunisian event dedicated to the fourth art, in November 2021, she received a tribute for her entire theatrical and artistic career.

Source Biography of Florisse Adjanohoun.      

A 2009 graduate of the Institut Supérieur de l'Image et du Son in Ouagadougou, Lelly Kossa Anité-Ghouhi began her career as a scriptwriter on TV series and feature films in Burkina Faso and Togo. Director, she won the Grand Prix de la Semaine Nationale du Cinéma Togolais in 2022 with her short film Parfois le destin. Delegate of the Blitta Documentary Film Festival, Togo, from 2017 to 2022, and representative of the Espoir-Fife Film Festival on the Togo edition, she is currently production manager of the European program Togo Créatif, at the Institut Français de Lomé. She filmed the shows programmed for the Instant Togo Festival, which took place in Lomé, Tsévié and Agbodrafo in December 2023.

This video was registered thanks to the support of the Institut Français, the Metropole de Lyon and the City of Lyon as part of the 2023 - 2024 project "Development of a digital resource on African choreographic creation and a tool for artistic training, art criticism and cultural mediation in Benin and Togo" led by Dr Anne Décoret-Ahiha.