Combat des lianes

A rich and mesmeric choreography that draws on the roots of the forest and the movements of peoples engaged in a struggle for survival.

In the darkness of a sacred forest, inhabited by and overflowing with ancestral and heritage treasures, bodies emerge. As they contort and interweave themselves, they slowly become entangled in an intense and captivating dance, like lianas seeking the canopy. After L’Opéra du villageois last season, which examined the theft of artworks during the colonial era, Zora Snake continues his exploration of relations of domination. Here, resistance takes the form of a dance in the heart of the lia­nas, at once one and many, in a confrontation with the defores­tation that threatens the indigenous peoples of Central Africa.

A long-time associate of the Théâtre National, Zora Snake is pursuing a committed research project in which dance beco­mes a performative act of revolt and justice with the aim of restoring the soul of our humanity. Immersed among the Baka communities in the equatorial forest, the choreographer-per­former and the performers-creators absorbed the polypho­nic rhythms and polyrhythmic gestures of those whose habitat is disappearing under the onslaught of capitalism. On stage, seven dancers and musicians – a sacred number linked to solidarity and the spirit of urgency in the cosmogonies of the Koungang peoples of western Cameroon – make up an organic fresco which the silhouettes cling to, now fluidly, now convul­sively. Fuelled by electro beats and shamanic pulsations, the music carries and structures this dialogue between humans and their environment. A ritual as an initiatory place of healing.

At the origins…
the all-powerful vines

Dance is body and lianas … Changing the sacred dance

Through the power of the gesture inspired by the lush vege­tation that invades the space, at once torsion, contortion and poetry of bodies in search of the Sun, the choreographic syntax of Zora Snake is a journey through the invisible like the serpent of life, the rite of reincarnation and reinvention of a healthier and more peaceful society that we dream of in order to return to ourselves.

If dance takes shape here in the physicality of the lianas – void, fracture, fall and suspension, creaking, casing, multi­plying, travelling, from root to canopy. Among the Nku’ ngang (Nkoungang) secret societies in western Cameroon and the Baka communities in eastern Cameroon, the liana is believed to be a root connected to the ancestors, strengthening the bonds of the visible and the invisible through the guardians of tradition, where the NKoungang dance and mask practice consolidate the solidarity between the living. Like the ‘totems’ in western Cameroon or the god of the sacred forests Edzingui, among the Baka communities in eastern Cameroon, the lianas connect the villages and the ancestors and chase away evil spirits. In ritual dances, trance is not a dance, but a concrete science where dance is neither ‘primitive’ nor ‘ethnic’ nor ‘eth­nological’. It is dance reinvented from its roots towards all roots. It is human dance in harmony with nature that must be understood here, in the sense used by Philippe Descola, ‘a sum of beings and relations whose totality can never be exhausted’ – species, plants, lianas, sacred places – which remembers what is to come, now.

More specifically, dance here manifests itself through its ability to capture the most diverse movements that come its way. It is the fragmentation of dances in motion across all forms and rituals, linked to hip-hop, steppin’, break-dance, krump and tra­ditional dances.

Zora Snake makes dance a motif of illumination, just as a simple gesture, a shadow cast on the stage, a breath or the rumble of the drums make us tip over into trance and the invisible docu­mentary chronicle.

Hence this form of escapist dance – or putting into perspective – in a positive sense, transformed from nomadic wanderings into rituals, musical rhythms, steps, vocal resonances, smells, soil, clothes, colours. Between rebellion and relaxation, dance remembers the material and the multiplicity of life forms. And it is precisely in the multiple that its strength lies in finding something new.

The stage: in search of the umbilical cord

For Zora Snake, it is not so much a question of literally represen­ting the lianas but rather of creating a stage space (or ‘umbi­lical cord’) that connects and is connected to the artists and audience – who make up communities – for deterritorializa­tion, the transcendence of identities, the liberation of energy and the celebration of communities. This is precisely where the challenge lies. Combat des lianes is set before language, strip­ped of pathos, ideology and didacticism, elevating us to a pure and alert state of consciousness and a series of sensations that are both intimate and collective, specific to the liminal rites of ancestral cultures.

On closer inspection, Combat des lianes is less a dance perfor­mance than a form of collective ritual with deconstructed spa­tial, temporal and social dimensions, open to the long-lasting present, to breathing and to the restoration of the ruined worlds we live in. It

Première @ Théâtre National Wallonie-Bruxelles 23 september 2025
23.09 > 04.10.2025

Touring periods
May – June – July 2026
Season 2026-2027

Photos : © Raoul Mboghing