Her first solo Mon appart’ en dit long initiated a dance style inspired by the notion of marronnage (freedom from oppression). Her creations Z.H., S/T/R/A/T/E/S - Quartet, Le syndrome de l’initié.e, Rite de passage || Solo 2, and G.R.O.O.V.E. bring together dance, music, voice and visual arts and explore margins, rituals and corporeal memories.
In parallel, she has developed her artistic philosophy in collaborations with artists working in other disciplines such as the photographer Denis Darzacq (La Chute series), the poet Grand Corps Malade (Roméo kiffe Juliette video) and the filmmaker Yolande Zauberman (Révélations Césars video, 2021).
In 2016 she met the writer Dénètem Touam Bona and began to explore how the notion of marronnage (freedom from oppression, originally in the context of runaway slaves in the West Indes) could be extended to the arts. In 2017, the artist Clément Cogitore asked Bintou Dembélé to create the choreography for the short film Les Indes galantes based on the opera by Jean-Philippe Rameau, which went viral on the 3e Scène platform. To mark its 350th anniversary, the National Opera in Paris commissioned the entire opéra-ballet to be performed at the Opéra Bastille.
Eager to see the philosophy of marronnage included in the history of dance, she has engaged in fruitful discussions with academics including Isabelle Launay, Mame-Fatou Niang and Noémie N’Diaye. She has been invited to perform at the Palais de la Porte Dorée, at T2G-CDN, at the Pompidou Centre and at the Musée du Quai Branly. She is one of ten international guest artists invited to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Centre Pompidou-Metz.
From 2020 to 2022, she was artist in residence at Ateliers Médicis. In 2021, she was invited to a writers residency at the Villa Médicis in Rome and then at Villa Albertine in Chicago, a residency she inaugurated. In 2022, she was awarded the SACD Choreography Prize.
Bintou Dembélé
A. major figure on the French Hip-Hop scene, Bintou Dembélé tells and perpetuates the unique story of this culture of protest on the margins of society. She started dancing in 1985, drawing inspiration from underground street culture and clubbing. In 2002 she created her own company, Rualité.