Bintou Dembélé

Bintou Dembélé is one of the leading figures to emerge from the hip-hop movement in France. Her work focuses in particular on the body’s memory through the lens of French colonial and post-colonial history.

A dancer and choreographer, Bintou Dembélé made her debut with the group Aktuel Force and the Mouv’ collective in 1985, then co-founded Ykanji, before joining the Käfig company.

She collaborates with artists as diverse as MC Solaar, Grand Corps Malade, the photographer Denis Darzacq and the film director Anne Cissé, building bridges from the outset between artistic fields that are usually separate.

In 2002, she founded the company Rualité and established a distinctive choreographic approach: by reinterpreting street dance through the lens of repetitive music and rhythmic polyphony, her works explore ritual and bodily memory, marginalised cultures, and the grey areas of colonial and post-colonial history. The company has produced six shows, which have been performed in France and internationally (including Belgium, Burma, Chile, French Guiana, Mali, Senegal and Switzerland, amongst others).

In 2017, Clément Cogitore commissioned her to choreograph Les Indes galantes for the 3e Scène at the Paris National Opera, followed by the eponymous opera, which he directed in 2019. She has also developed numerous collaborations with the world of research and, since 2020, has been an associate artist at the Ateliers Médicis, Carnegie Mellon University and Columbia Reid Hall in Paris.