Dourkalang / PAIR residence programme, Paris (France)
This creative residency will take place from June 1 to July 11, 2026, marking a key stage in the development of this upcoming choreographic and theatrical piece based on documentary writing.
A life story brought to the stage
Drawing from the book Ndam Se Na, Taigué Ahmed, in collaboration with Bruno Freyssinet, is developing a stage adaptation combining dance, voice, and dramaturgy. Dourkalang—meaning “among the people”—is rooted in the artist’s personal history, shaped by a childhood in war-torn Chad.
As a child, Taigué narrowly escaped a massacre thanks to his mother, who disguised him as a girl and hid him among his sisters. Growing up in a context where violence was omnipresent, he discovered dance as a teenager through the National Ballet of Chad, before building an artistic career across Africa and Europe.
The piece transforms key moments of his life into choreographic scenes, creating a first-person narrative where Chadian traditional dances meet contemporary dance.
A work on memory and transformation
Beyond the personal story, Dourkalang explores how traumatic experiences can be transformed through the body and artistic creation. The stage becomes a space of living memory, where intimate stories resonate on a universal level.
The project strongly echoes today’s European context, where many people with migration backgrounds carry similar experiences. It proposes art as a space for repair, transmission, and connection.
Research focus during the residency
Throughout the six-week residency, the work will focus on:
Finalizing the dramaturgical structure
Writing choreographic sequences
Blending contemporary dance with Chadian traditional dances
Articulating movement with recorded and live voice
Developing a sound environment combining music, chants, and documentary materials
Exploring the relationship with the audience and spatial dynamics
An immersive stage device
The piece relies on a minimalist and immersive staging. Alone on stage, Taigué Ahmed performs with a headset microphone, placing the body and voice at the center.
Fragments of recorded voice—memories, thoughts, traces of the past—interact with the present moment on stage. The performer engages with this sonic memory, extending, diverting, or confronting it.
Among the audience, Bruno Freyssinet takes on the role of a “passer,” orchestrating sounds, voices, and music in real time to create an evolving soundscape. His presence, both subtle and active, becomes an integral part of the dramaturgy, shaping a shared listening space between stage and audience.
Origins of the collaboration
Taigué Ahmed (Ndam Se Na Company, Chad) and Bruno Freyssinet (Transplanisphère, France) first met in 2023, brought together by a shared interest in documentary forms and migration-related narratives.
Dourkalang builds on their artistic dialogue and on Taigué’s book Ndam Se Na, co-written with Mathieu Chouinard.
A structuring residency
Designed as both a research and visibility phase, the residency will include several working sessions open to professionals. A first showing is planned mid-way through the residency, followed by a final phase dedicated to producing a high-quality video recording to support the future dissemination of the piece.
With Dourkalang, Transplanisphère continues its commitment to supporting artistic projects that engage with contemporary narratives, transnational dynamics, and hybrid creative forms.
