Dorothée Munyaneza

“The choreography was about digging into the physical memories of these women’s tension, their rage, their sorrow. I tried to honestly remember my feelings and the emotional journey I went through in their presence. I am not trying to reproduce rape; I want to cut through the trauma so that people can receive and understand these experiences. The body speaks when testimony has been suspended.”

“I recorded their voices and really tried to capture how they held themselves, how they walked, how they wiped away their tears. It all became physical, choreographic, material. We hear some of their testimonies in the piece, and I had to find a way for the body to navigate through these spoken words”

“I would ask if I could take a photo after talking to them, and most would change into a beautiful dress. They wanted me to carry beauty and hope with me.”

“It’s true that men who invade territories also want to annihilate the physical body, the social body. But I decided to zoom into the stories of the Rwandan women and let that spread out and speak of the others.”

“Rwanda is in me, it’s very deep. My creativity is linked to the past, my childhood there. There is much to be said and told, not just through dance and music, but that is one way to address it. It’s a question of creating, mending, performing, witnessing, sharing.”