Open Daily 9:30–6:00, Monday Until 8:00
Mkimbizi, “the displaced one,” in Swahili, is a choreographic solo built around an imposed necessity: to keep going, for lack of any other choice. Born in Goma, in the heart of exile, Birongo Ngosa Djuma develops a physical language that doesn’t recount displacement but rather embodies its very structure: a body that carries, walks, falls, and gets back up, without ever truly resting.
The piece opens with a race through the audience area before the performer enters the stage, then unfolds in five movements: the mechanics of displacement, the body’s contamination by what it passes through, the gradual disruption of its cycles, and what, in the end, remains unresolved and open-ended.
The subtitle, Demeure sans fin, expresses what the piece does rather than what it narrates: a dwelling that remains forever unfinished, and a persistence that refuses to yield. The project resonates with the theme of this edition of the Biennale, questioning what continues to circulate, resist, and nourish, even when the territory bears the deep imprints of history.
The set design and soundscape aren’t mere embellishments of the play: they’re its very text. The sound is whispered rather than recorded live, with no pre-recorded elements, and conceived as a full-fledged protagonist, alive and changing with each performance. The body itself partly provides the lighting. A physical set piece, designed specifically for this play, punctuates the narrative in its final phase. Each technical element is conceived as a dramaturgical gesture, not as a set piece.
