"G.R.O.O.V.E" by Bintou Dembélé - extracts

Let’s go! The Festival d’Avignon opens its 77th edition with an ambulatory dance/music/light show, a three-hour modern-day ritual which throws wide open the doors of the Opéra. Come experience the pulsing music of artist Bintou Dembélé’s G.R.O.O.V.E. and meet a major figure in the history of French hip-hop and the winner of the SACD Choreography award in 2022, who began in 2002 a fascinating work based on a way of thinking and a dance breaking free of all constraints, at once heritage and celebration. Bintou left her mark in 2019 with her choreography of Jean-Philippe Rameau’s opera-ballet Les Indes galantes for the Opéra national de Paris. With G.R.O.O.V.E., Bintou Dembélé thwarts expectations in a flamboyant journey which subverts this libretto. She plays with the codes of the street, calls on the sacred, and brings together hip-hop, K.R.U.M.P., voguing, Célia Kameni’s amazing singing, and Charles Amblard’s lap steep guitar, which will invite you to join them on the dance floor.