Kenyan Indian poet and spoken word artist Shailja Patel caught up with Faustin Linyekula, Congolese Dancer and Choreographer, at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. This is a compilation of the conversation.

Faustin Linyekula: My name is Kabako. Kabako is my name. Once Kabako, forever Kabako. I have a story to tell.

I came to dancing late, over 20. I grew up dancing like most people dance, because in my country, we have sound everywhere. But for many years I could not call myself a dancer. Because I believe in rituals, and I had not gone through the rituals, the training, to be a dancer. I was an actor using his body. So I began by deconstructing movement – line and point.

Shailja Patel: Why did you go back to Congo?

FL: Because I was tired of being a stranger. The most painful was to be a stranger in Kenya – in another African country. I spent 6 years as a tourist in Kenya. I could not get papers. Every year, I crossed the border into Uganda for one day, then came back in, so I got a tourist visa stamp in my passport.

For many years in exile, I thought: Perhaps my only true country is my body.

Theater is, first of all, a body in front of other bodies. Not light, text, or story.

SP: Why do you stay in the Congo, despite all the difficulties?

I was born and raised in a land where there was never any room for an individual. No one had a right to think.

I have inherited a pile of ruins. What can I do to make it a space where I can continue dreaming? Is it possible to continue dreaming without running away? I create using all these things which are collapsing around me which are all I have.

I was born in a country called Zaire. On 16th May 1997, I was still a Zairean. On the 17th of May, 1997, I woke up to be told I was Congolese. That my name was Faustin.

My name is everything that makes me.

Under Mobutu Sese Seko, it was illegal to have a name that was not Zairean. Whoever had a foreign name was kicked out. Whoever wore a tie was put in jail.

Every morning in school for the “revolutionary half-hour”, we sang the glories of Papa Mobutu. I studied Latin for 6 years in school.

When I perform from ritual – like something my grandmother taught me – it’s not ritual any more. On stage, under lights, it becomes something else. Performance.

Between 1998 and 2003, over 5 years, 3.3 million people were killed in my country.

Is it really possible to tell these stories, so far outside reality, and make them comprehensible?

My work is people-specific. A series of solo journeys for each performer.

Leaving it open for each one to tell their own stories, because I feel powerless.

In developing each individual’s journey, I could never think of what will come out.

There is never a sense of a given. In movement, nothing is given. Everything has to be found.

We had a female dancer in the company. She left to live in Europe, do other things. We did not replace her. People are not interchangeable. For us, from inside, we know there is a hole in the wall, and it is important to remember the hole in the wall. But we hope it is not seen from outside.

A theater venue in Kinshasa: a piece of land. A fence around. Concrete block in the middle. Open air.
8 power cans. 8 switches. When there is a performance, people bring chairs, and sit.

When I work in these circumstances, I redefine theater. Is it a building, or a relationship between performer and audience?

You always have malaria at one point or another.
The rice we eat is 16th grade rice from Thailand.
We eat frozen fish from Namibia, yet we have deep rivers and lakes. For many years the country has produced nothing for its own people.

The country is very rich.
The leaders are very rich.
They make sure we know how rich they are.
The people are very poor.
Even those who pray all night
still starve.

In our minds, we are still, to date, colonial subjects.
Legitimacy, in any African country, still comes from outside. Your own people may hate you. But if America, Britain or France like you you will stay leader.

SP: How do you balance making art with all you need to do to support your art – travel, fundraising, marketing, etc.?

FL: There is no balance. You just go. You just move.
We, the privileged, why should we complain or run away?

Maybe we don’t care about arts. We just need to believe in something where no one believes in anything anymore.
We just need a space to keep dreaming.

SP: Can you talk about your next work?

FL: My next work is called Festival of Lies. There is a two-hour version and a 6-hour version. Because you need time to talk about history. We are collecting stories, but we only tell lies, about ourselves and the country. At the end, we see who is winner.

Question (from audience member): What happened to the pygmies, with their rich culture and polytonal music, during the war?

FL: It’s very interesting that you ask about pygmies. The pygmies were eaten. Literally eaten, during the war. There was this belief that eating human flesh confers special powers.

But there are still some left?

FL: The average life expectancy for a Congolese is 41.
The average life expectancy for a pygmy is 29.

Kabako is my name. I had a story to tell you. But there was so much noise in my head that I forgot it. I am sorry. My dance is nothing but an attempt to remember my name.

For more about Linyekula, go to www.kabako.org
For more about Patel, go to www.shailja.com