Samedi Détente by Dorothée Munyaneza (review)

Artists and scholars alike debate the ethics of scripting and performing trauma for spectators removed in time and space from the traumatic event. How does one encapsulate the horrors and embodied experiences of a traumatic past for the present stage? What purpose does this serve? Dorothée Munyaneza of Compagnie Kadidi, accompanied by Ivoirian dancer Nadia Beugré and French composer Alain Mahé, reconciles these debates in her multidimensional debut work, Samedi Détente. Munyaneza demonstrates how movement, sound, and language can work together to portray the multiple levels by which trauma is experienced while keeping spectators at a critical distance. Each evening from January 14th to the 17th, 2016, the trio transformed LuEsther Hall of the Public Theater in Manhattan’s East Village into a haunting reflection of the Rwandan genocide. Its title borrowed from a popular 1990s Rwandan radio program, Samedi Détente is at once chilling testimony of the genocide from Munyaneza’s perspective as a 12-year-old survivor in April 1994 and a powerful choreographic work blending an improvisational movement style with an original, live sound score. The trio repeatedly provoked the mostly white American audience to reflect on what they were doing in April 1994 while 800,000 people were killed over a hundred days in the East African country.

As the house lights dimmed, Mahé set the tone of the piece when he faced the audience and unceremoniously scraped two knifes together. Following the disconcerting sound of metal against metal, Munyaneza made her way from the back of the house toward a table and microphone center stage while singing in Kinyarwanda, a Bantu language of Rwanda. Her sweet singing gradually transformed into an abrasive dance, standing on the amplified table and rhythmically pounding her feet as she assertively stared at her audience. Simultaneously, the minimal lighting revealed Beugré’s presence in the upper-left corner, a cloth covering her face. She appeared to be a specter in the background, portraying both the isolation felt by millions of Rwandans, as well as the impossibility of what the piece attempts: to aptly convey the horrors of the genocide across a significant time and space. Munyaneza’s opening song transformed into the first of several English-language monologues while Beugré’s subtle hand gestures accelerated until she pulled herself to the front of the stage in two large steps. She screamed, her shirt pulled up to cover her mouth, just as Munyaneza finished recounting the first time she bore witness to the slaughter of civilians. Munyaneza’s words dissolved into an open-mouthed silent scream, completed by Beugré’s muffled one.

The piece continued in this manner: a montage of movement, song, sound, and testimony on a dimly lit stage. Although the assemblage of vignettes at times felt disjointed, Munyaneza demonstrated the potency of this combination of theatrical conventions. When words no longer sufficed, movement and sound took over, and when movement and sound did not do justice to the actual, lived horrors of her experience, the clarity of the spoken word ensured a common understanding. She recounted her disbelief of the atrocities committed by the Hutu majority, named several individuals who lost their lives, and denounced nuns, priests, and former French president François Mitterrand for their complicity and participation. Her words, spoken plainly to the audience, gave these details the clarity and bluntness they deserve. Yet, when the events she described entered the realm of the ineffable, Munyaneza seamlessly slipped into song or dance, her body tense, her muscles contracted as her torso jutted forward over bent, turned-in legs, accompanied by Mahé’s composition of rattling pots and knives striking wood.

Nadia Beugré in Samedi Détente. (Photo: Laura Fouqueré.)

As a dance practitioner I felt an especially visceral response to the movement phrases, many of which I would have liked to continue longer. Beugré, an accomplished choreographer and dancer, performed some of the most compelling movement phrases. Her role shifted throughout the...