A triple challenge

Franco-Malagasy dancer and choreographer Soa Ratsifandrihana searches for a vocabulary capable of holding bodies and history together, in order to understand what connects them and what separates them. Born in Madagascar, raised in France and now based in Brussels, after her training at the Paris Conservatory she worked with James Thierrée, Salia Sanou and Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker before creating her first solo piece in 2021, g r oo v e, which has been presented more than fifty times across Europe, Canada and Asia.

Fampitaha, fampita, fampitàna is the second chapter of a diptych that began with the radio creation Rouge Cratère, born from the artist’s journey to Madagascar and from a collection of voices and testimonies on the consequences of colonisation on bodies.
In Malagasy, the three words of the title mean “comparison, transmission, rivalry”. On stage, dancers Audrey Mérilus, Stanley Ollivier and Elsy Robert move together with multi-instrumentalist Joël Rabesolo, who also composed the music: four bodies that measure themselves against one another, choose each other and free themselves from the layers of violence that have shaped them.
They wear period costumes and silver boots, moving among carpets that draw the shape of an archipelago on the floor.

The footwork phrase is created by Jérémie Polin Razanaparany, known as Raza; the dramaturgy is by Lily Brieu Nguyen, the lighting by Marie-Christine Soma, and the costumes by Harilay Rabenjamina.
The performance, presented as a world premiere at the Festival d’Automne in Paris in 2024 and now receiving its Italian premiere at the 20th Dance Biennale, creates a line of dialogue between the children of diasporas and their places of origin: a plural narrative in which the fragmentation of these stories carries as much weight as their reappropriation.
Before the audience, the story takes shape of those who would never have left their island and who, together with others, oppose exile with a procession.