Dorothée Munyaneza

Born in Rwanda, Dorothé Munyaneza left Kigali in 1994 when she was 12 for England, where she studied music at the Jonas Foundation in London and social sciences at Canterbury Christ Church University. In 2004, she composed and performed the original soundtrack for Terry George's Hotel Rwanda, before appearing a year later on the album Anatomic by Afro Celt Sound System. In 2006, without any formal training, she danced for the first time in François Verret's Sans Retour. After performing in several of the French choreographer's creations, Dorothée Munyaneza worked alongside Mark Tompkins, Robyn Orlin, Rachid Ouramdane, and Alain Buffard. In 2013, she founded her own company, Kadidi, and in 2014, she created her first show, Samedi Détente, which evoked the Rwandan genocide by returning to those moments of laughter that punctuated life before the tears of war. A singer and a musician, a dancer and an actress, a writer and a choreographer, Dorothée Munyaneza has established herself in the French cultural landscape as a unique artist who refuses boundaries and speaks out “to force us to listen to the silences and see the scars of History.”  

Portrait of Dorothée Munyaneza © portrait Richard Schroeder