Baggré: Science and Maths of the Ancestors
Solo Badolo
Souleymane “Solo” Badolo is a dancer, choreographer, and founder of Kongo Ba Téria.
Artist BioJacob Bamogo is a professor of sound and light at various African universities in Burkina Faso, Guinea-Conakry, and Benin. He has produced several live performances in dance and theater.
Artist BioSouleymane “Solo” Badolo wants to go back to the source to further deepen his research on these very old techniques that are being ignored or forgotten because of religions that are taking over. He would like to give life to this ancestral knowledge through my choreographic creations, and above all to help to be the bridge between the young generation and the rest of the world to know this knowledge of the past—how to read the signs in the sand or the position of the coris (shell) that predict or cure. With Creative Capital’s support Badolo will be able to develop his research using the signs and the placement of coris to finally create a new choreographic approach.
Creative Capital Carnival 2023
Solo Badolo
Red Hook, NY
Souleymane “Solo” Badolo started his professional career as a dancer for the DAMA, a traditional African dance company. In 1993, he founded his own Burkina Faso–based troupe, Kongo Ba Téria, which fuses traditional African dances with Western contemporary dance and continues to tour internationally. Badolo has danced with world-renowned contemporary African dance company Salia ni Seydou, worked with French choreographers Elsa Wolliaston and Mathilde Monnier, and performed with the National Ballet of Burkina Faso. He and Kongo Ba Téria are featured in the widely screened documentary Movement (R)evolution Africa (2007), which documents the continent’s emergent experimental-dance scene. Since moving to New York City in 2009, Badolo has created a number of solo projects commissioned and presented by Danspace Project, New York Live Arts, Dance New Amsterdam, Harlem Stage, the 92nd Street Y, the Museum of Arts and Design, and the sprawling River to River Festival. He has collaborated with Nora Chipaumire, Ralph Lemon, Reggie Wilson, and Jawole Willa Jo Zollar of Urban Bush Women. Badolo’s ongoing research in Africa has been supported by the Suitcase Fund of New York Live Arts. Badolo was nominated for the 2011 Bessie Award for Outstanding Emerging Choreographer and received the 2012 Juried Bessie Award (from jurors Lar Lubovitch, Yvonne Rainer, and Jawole Willa Jo Zollar). In summer 2013, he was named Artist-in-Residence at the Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance at Wesleyan University and at Mount Tremper Arts. Badolo was commissioned to create a dance for Philadanco as part of James Brown: Get on the Good Foot, produced by the Apollo Theater for presentation there in October 2013, followed by national and international touring dates. Badolo is a participant in the Extended Life cohort of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and the 2014 recipient of Wesleyan University’s Mariam McGlone Emerging Choreographer Award.
Jacob Bamogo
Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso
Jacob Bamogo is a professor of sound and light at various African universities in Burkina Faso, Guinea-Conakry, and Benin. He has produced several live performances in dance and theater.