WOLE SOYINKA, KOFFI KÔKÔ, PETER BADEJO (Nigeria/Benin)
Opening: "Sarmakand - A Reading in Music and Movement"

World Premiere

IN TRANSIT 04 opens with a theatre project specifically created for the occasion by Wole Soyinka, Nobel Literature Prize Laureate and Africa's most influential dramatist. Together with IN TRANSIT 04 curator Koffi Kôkô, Wole Soyinka has developed for this opening event a drama project reflecting the entire house of world cultures. They have consciously chosen to transcend standard performance, dance or theatre categories by positing an experimental frame generating the space to engender something new.
The starting point is Wole Soyinka's poem "Samarkand and Other Markets I Have Known", a metaphor for exchange between peoples and cultures, transcending the narrowly-interpreted concept of borders that permeates notions coined by national, ethnic, or religious concerns. In Soyinka's view, post-colonial Africa is characterised by wars fought along lines of friction following the ethnic and national boundaries established arbitrarily in the colonial era. But a cultural exchange is indeed possible, as the marketplace shows - a centre equally for trade and cross-cultural encounters.

"A market is kind haven for the wandering soul
or the merely ruminant. Each stall
is shrine and temple, magic cave of memorabilia.
Its passages are grottoes that transport us
bargain hunters all, from pole to antipodes, annulling
time, evoking places and lost histories."

This piece has been produced jointly with Peter Badejo working with a cast from various nationalities and using a musical surround provided by "Black Voices", the outstanding female a-cappella quintet from Birmingham's black community.

Samarkand - A Reading in Music and Movement
Concept and directing:
Wole Soyinka, Koffi Kôkô and Peter Badejo
Participants: Wole Soyinka, Koffi Kôkô, Peter Badejo, Black Voices (Music), Tunji Oyelana (Music) Tché Tché & Kongo Ba Téria Ensembles (Dance)
Concert Black Voices:
Carol Pemberton, Shereece Storrod, Sandra Francis, Celia Anderson, Evon Nelson
Languages: German and English

Wole Soyinka was born in Isara/West Nigeria in 1934. Twenty years later, in 1954, he left for England, studied drama and then worked from 1958-60 as dramatic advisor and actor at the Royal Court Theatre, London. In 1960 he returned to Nigeria, where, in 1965 and from 1967-69, he was repeatedly imprisoned for political reasons. In 1986 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Wole Soyinka has written a total of 25 plays, many of which he has directed and staged himself. He is presently teaching Comparative Literature at the Emory University in Atlanta.

Peter Badejo is considered one of the leading Nigerian choreographers, dancers and performance specialists. He has been living in London since 1990, and quickly made a name for himself with his mix of traditional Nigerian and contemporary British dance. His commitment to modern African dance is apparent both in the workshops and youth programmes he organises, and also in his intensive research into the subject.

Black Voices
http://www.blackvoices.co.uk