Byb Chanel Bibene | [Re]member
Byb Chanel Bibene | [Re]member
Dancer/Choreographer
@mbonguifestival | Byb Kongo Bibene on FB | mbonguifest.org
The project [Re]member investigates through dance, installation, live and recorded music, the history of the rebellions of captured Africans on the slave ships during the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, and on the plantations in the Americas and the Caribbean. The project strives to recover the names of numerous African men and women who led resistance revolts to break out to freedom. In the Americas, many men and women formed free communities, however, their names and faces remain unknown or uncelebrated for the most part.
In the installation component of the project, there are photographic prints and sketches of the African leaders. They are placed on stands in a formation shaped like a boat on the stage. The movement vocabulary of the solo dancer uses an ethnic dance aesthetic that invokes a spiritual state in the body and the vocals. The music overlaps recorded rhythms and live music by a vocalist and a guitar player. The dancer, vocalist, and guitar player embody the spiritual forces that drove the uprising of the Africans. The project also uses symbolism composed of elements found on slave ships, such as chains, belles, wooden bars, a flag, and horns… There will also be a machete utilized as a weapon. This machete is a physical and metaphysical symbol of strength and connectedness between the human to the ancestral realms.
About Byb Chanel Bibene
Bibene is a dance educator, choreographer, and performer. He excels in theater, ethnic, African urban, and contemporary dance forms. His own technical and aesthetic sensibility is rooted in the culture and dances of his country of origin, the Republic of Congo. Award winner, Bibene has toured the world and performed internationally with companies originating from Africa, Europe, and the USA. Bibene has had the honor to work with choreographers such as Orchy Nzaba, Salia Sanou, Reggie Wilson, Johanna Haigood, Amara Tabor Smith, Paco Gomes, Paco Decina.
Artistic Director of Kiandanda Dance Theater, Bibene initiated the Mbongui Square festival, a multidisciplinary arts festival that gathers dance, music, spoken word, and visual artists from the Bay Area and across the world.
A two-time Izzies-Isadora Duncan Dance Awards nominee, Bibene has won 3rd place at the African Choreographic Contest and the Radio France International Dance Award, as well as recipient of grants from the Zellerbach Family Foundation, Cash Grant, City of Oakland, the Furthur Foundation, the San Francisco Arts Commission…
Outside of his professional careers of Theater and Dance, Bibene has a passion for writing. He is author of numerous poetry and shorts, and winner of numerous poetry prizes. Bibene owns a Bachelor in Science and an MFA in Dance. Currently, he teaches at UC Berkeley.
