The project
With Les Indes Galantes – The Voice of Souls, Bintou Dembélé offers a powerful, committed, and choreographic reinterpretation of Jean-Philippe Rameau’s baroque opera.
This large-scale choreographic concert brings together 16 dancers from her company Rualité, 24 singers from the Namur Chamber Choir, and 30 musicians from the Cappella Mediterranea orchestra, under the direction of conductor Leonardo Garcia-Alarcón. The original libretto by Louis Fuzelier is brought into dialogue with contemporary physical languages rooted in hip-hop, krump, and urban cultures.
The piece delivers a bold and emotionally charged reimagining of Les Indes Galantes, interrogating historical legacies, colonial power structures, racial tensions, and the voice as an expression of the soul. The project continues Bintou Dembélé’s commitment to challenging dominant narratives—she was the first female choreographer invited to work at the Paris Opera—by reexamining history through marginalized bodies, music, and storytelling.
Key milestones:
– November 2023 to May 2025: creation and rehearsal phases at the Grand Manège in Namur, the CND in Pantin, and the Maison de la Musique in Nanterre
– May 21–22, 2025: performances at La Seine Musicale in Paris
– May 28 to December 2, 2025: international tour with 13 performances in Madrid, Lyon, Bordeaux, the UK, and São Paulo
By supporting Les Indes Galantes, the Francis Kurkdjian Endowment Fund pays tribute to the invisible legacies of colonialism, brings Rameau’s work back to life through body and voice, and champions an art form that is engaged, inclusive, and vibrantly human.
Bintou Dembélé is a choreographer, artistic director and dancer who defines herself as "of hip-hop origin". It is through this culture of the street and the image that she has invented a singular language since her beginnings in France (1985). Through her most recent creations, she addresses the colonial fact, the notion of rite and marronage with the collaboration of other artists and researchers.