Kawral: the beat of breathing

Music and dance are like the chicken and the egg. This is even truer of Kawral, in which it's difficult to say which comes first.

Founder of jazz outfit Mâäk's Spirit, the trumpeter Laurent Blondiau likes to journey with music. When passing through Ouagadougou, he met the dancer Salia Sanou, founder of the Centre de Développement Chorégraphique La Termitière. The two men decided to work together and developed the Kawral project, which means "meeting" in one of the languages of Burkina Faso.

Onstage there are five musicians, five dancers, and a lighting technician. The music, like the dances, is sometimes written, sometimes improvised. It's a real mix, not an assimilation or a dilution. The music of the five Mâäk musicians doesn't pander to phony Africanism. The instruments, which allow themselves a few joyful electronic flourishes, remain faithful to the pulsating of the beat and the rhythm of breathing. Salia Sanou's dancers allow echoes of movements and of more traditional dances to show through within their contemporary work. It's an encounter in which everything is possible, and everything is transformed. The encounters between music and dance are at times abrupt, at times in complete unison. Everything can change at any moment. A joyful experience for both eyes and ears.

KAWRAL
30/9 & 1/10, 20.30, Théâtre 140, www.theatre140.be