KETTLY NOËL
Artist - Choreographer - Performer
“Many people have a strong image of Kettly Noël; but without knowing the name. In 2014, this artist played the character of crazy Zabou in Timbuktu, the film by Abderrahmane Sissako. Zabou continuing to go made up, not veiled, in the city of the desert fallen into the hands of the jihadists. Can the figure of Kettly Noël be guessed in Zabou? Sumptuous outfits in three pieces of cloth. Eyes rolled back on an enigmatic interiority. An incisive gaze turned on otherness. Small body, suspended, hieratic. Zabou: a crazy female artist madness, more powerful than all the madness of men.
Actress in front of Sissako's camera, Kettly Noël is best known as a choreographic artist. Dance attracted him early in his youth to Haiti. Rubbing shoulders with American, then French modernity (she spent a few years in Paris, where she was noticed), Kettly Noël chose Africa. Mid-1990s: she seeks her partners in Benin, then in Bamako. Must train them. Youth. Closer to the street. He must transmit a contemporary perspective on his art. Explore it more and more. Far beyond words, without running behind style or form.
Kettly Noël's creations are forged in contact with harsh realities. Her pieces set her apart in the choreographic renewal underway on the black continent. Convinced that Africa must care about what it specifically wants to say in the world, passionate about the idea that dance is one of its deep forces, it nevertheless outlines a future that transgresses any confinement of identity. »
Excerpt from a text by Gérard Mayen
Repertoire & choreographic events
- 2022 -
> February: Creation of the dance and performance film NEXT 2, collaboration between Germany, Iceland and Mali
> February: AM ANFANG shows at the Humboldt Forum in Berlin
> November/December 2022: 3rd of the dance & performance biennial "Port-au-Prince Art Performance - PAPAP" in Port-au-Prince (Haiti)
- 2020 -
Organization of the 2nd edition of the dance & performance biennial "Port-au-Prince Art Performance - PAPAP" in Port-au-Prince (Haiti)
- 2019 -
> Danse Mutante - 2019 creation for 2 Canadian dancers at Agora de la danse au Canada
> Day Dream - creation for the 1000 Scores project by Cornélius Puschke at the Tanz im August festival
- 2018 -
Organization of the 1st edition of the dance & performance biennial "Port-au-Prince Art Performance - PAPAP" in Port-au-Prince (Haiti)
- 2017 -
> Zombification - installation and performance for documenta 14 in Athens
A visual dive into the darkness of memory, mixing the woads, the voodoo loas of death, with the sonderkommandos of Ebola, evoking pell-mell slavery, lynchings, death camps, the Cambodian "killing fields" or Rwandans, past or future massacres and the darkest faces of our history,
Zombification refers to images that constantly haunt the minds of contemporary man and prevent a more modern vision from being conceived. In an incessant and absurd ballet of dehumanized bodies served by "croque mort", an impossible project that reconciles Haitian surrealism and contemporary art, a woman, like Orpheus reincarnated, tries to survive among the corpses of our illusions.
Zombification, meaning the obliteration of all consciousness and free will, is global.
> Creation at the Studio of the Center Chorégraphique de Créteil et du Val de Marne “The little stories of Tim Burton: The voodoo girl”. A project by Emilio Calcagno.
Kettly Noël is currently a resident laureate at the Cité Internationale des arts (Paris)
- 2016 -
TichÈlbÈ - Transmission and Triennial Dance Repertoire, Africa Dances!
- 2015 -
I am no longer a black woman (Wien Festvochen)
I am no longer a black woman is a questioning of black materialities with, as a central point, the woman far or close to the frozen image of everyone's eyes. From dark to light. A black woman in the dark A woman in the light. Let's talk more about gender, let's question being as matter and absence of matter. What would happen if we disregarded the human and all identity? What would be left? Matter?... And would dehumanized matter be capable of emotion? To live is to die every day. The eternal renewal common to all. The daily testament of our own existence.
- 2014 -
Actress in Timbuktu as Zabou - A film by Abderrahmane Sissako
Timbuktu has received several awards:
• Cannes Film Festival 2014: Ecumenical Jury Prize and François-Chalais Prize (official selection)
• 40th César20 ceremony (2015): Best Film, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Music, Best Editing, Best Sound
• London's Favourite French Film 2015 : Premier prix
- 2011/2013 -
Fanta Kaba - The Quartz-National Stage of Brest Bonlieu - National Stage of Annecy
A woman, at night, Africa.
Fanta Kaba, already a whole character just by name. His wandering in the city, Bamako perhaps, his body winding with the music and the lights, diluting itself in secret phantasmagoria. Her quest for an elsewhere, for a party, for a metamorphosis, for an adventure, for a man, which would upset her reality. Kettly Noël transposes to the stage this "confusion of bodies, from the woman to the dancer, from the dancer to the performer, from the performer to the character, from the character to the transformation, from the transformation to the performance", according to his words, inspired by the transgressive universe of bars and nightclubs, in the form of an "intimate story that probes the relationship between women and the fantasies they arouse". Fanta Kaba is no longer afraid of dark forces, of the breach opened in the day-to-day world, of loneliness, of revolt, of the urgency to survive. M Marie-Mai Corbel / extra-11 / Bonlieu - Annecy National Stage
- 2007 -
Correspondence with Nelisiwe Xaba (International Choreographic Meetings of Seine Saint Denis)
Kettly Noël and Nelisiwe Xaba meet again after many confidences.
They are there. The bodies are there, these ladies are there. They are there to tell each other their lives, to exchange their opinions, to laugh, to argue. They finally meet again, the time of an uncertain desire. A moment somewhere, the time of a dream where everything and nothing exists at the same time.
- 2005 -
The Other with Augusto Cuvilas (Bamako and Maputo)
He is there, she is there.
When Maputo meets Bamako. He is Augusto Cuvilas, she is Kettly Noël. A meeting of two artists in search of new representations where all forms find place. The sand punctuates time and space and slips through our hands. She wonders, he wonders. The moment is fragile.
- 2004 -
Wandering - Reality Theater Festival in Bamako
In a clinical and icy setting, a body alone facing itself: facing its joys, its pains, its memories, its desires and its tribulations. The body speaks for itself by erecting its self-portrait. A face to face....
- 2002 -
TichÈlbÈ - Reality Theater Festival in Bamako; Winner of the African and Indian Ocean Choreographic Encounters in Madagascar; RFI Dance Prize 2003
In the continuation of this exploration of the male, the female finds her prey. The decor is set: an alley in Port au Prince or Antananarivo, metal sheets worn by time. Two bodies fight each other, tear each other apart with disconcerting lucidity: the lipstick smudges… A settling of scores because there is nothing left.
