Startup wrapup: Fatima Ndoye

Interview by Callysta Croizer

Last time I interviewed curator and artist Fatima Ndoye was after Génération A – The Lab, an innovative artistic meeting that took place in Saint-Louis, Senegal in June 2023. Back then, she was already preparing for the next step of Génération A, the curatorial project she had imagined with Alioune Diagne about ten years ago. The Lab brought three companies from Senegal, Burkina Faso and Niger together with three Aerowaves companies or artists from the African diaspora, based in Europe. The artists dived into a jam-packed ten-day programme before having their work showcased at the Duo Solo Danse 2023 festival, in Saint-Louis, Senegal. The African artists’ next step was performing their work at the recent, third edition of the Génération A festival in Paris.

It’s been a week since Génération A #3 wrapped up in Théâtre Paris-Villette. How are you feeling about it today?

 First of all, the festival took place, and considering what’s happening in the country today, it’s a big deal. At the beginning, I didn’t feel like I was doing something particularly political. Today, I obviously do, and it raises a lot of questions for the future. At this stage, the artists and I are mostly sending each other sweet words, and the debrief will happen later. But I already heard positive responses from the professionals attending the festival. Most of them were happy to discover artists they didn’t know.

Last time we spoke, restrictions on artistic collaborations with artists from Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali had just been announced by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. How did it affect the festival’s programme?

Overall, we managed to bring almost all the works to the stage. We were working with artists from Burkina Faso and one from Niger with Ivorian nationality, but with the help of collaborators in France and in Burkina Faso, we were able to guide the artists through the application process to obtain visas. Two artists from Senegal got a visa only a few hours before takeoff, despite the strong relationships with France. One artist did not get a visa – for different reasons than those mentioned above – despite the fact that she had already worked several times in France and Belgium. In her case, we understood the refusal was out of our reach so we had to drop the invitation. We had worked for a long time to get there, so it was hard for us to face this situation – and even more for the artists. Fortunately, it was an isolated case and we managed to turn it into a blessing in disguise by inviting Zimbabwean artist Mcintosh Jerahuni, who hadn’t been able to participate in the 2021 edition of Génération A because of Covid. Thankfully, he was in Germany this June and managed to come straight away. Otherwise, it would have been impossible to invite someone based in Africa at such a short notice.

Did it strengthen the connections between the artist and theatre teams?

 I think that we had already established strong links with the artists since Génération A #1. We learned a lot together and from each other about organizational skills. There was a huge amount of production and organization. Take for example flight bookings. We were very conscious of the long trips needed for artists to come here and give life to the festival. We use a travel agency, and even if we take out insurance policies we cannot book tickets until the artists get a visa. So most of the time it costs a fortune from the festival’s budget.

The issue of connections and locations was raised quite recently. For the first edition of Génération A, many artists already knew each other and were thrilled to gather in Paris for a beautiful event. Senegalese dancer Hardo Ka declared, quite beautifully, “Génération A is our festival”. During the second edition, we stuck together closely because of Covid. But Génération A #3 is a little different. Today, the artists are not only from west Africa but from across the continent, and some of them are already part of well-structured groups. And as Adrien de Van, director of Théâtre Paris-Villette, told me, now that the festival is a little more well-known, the artists’ expectations may be a little different. Before then, they didn’t create works with this event in their sights, as some might do now.

When I had asked the artists to present a specific piece in the festival, some told me they were working on something else at that moment. And I said “go for it”, because I felt it was important to trust in a new project. I don’t regret it, but I think that sometimes it slightly alters their goal. For example, at the beginning of every edition I remind the artists that Génération A is a festival, not a platform. So the works must not be over forty minutes long, as they will be sharing the stage with other propositions. But this time, many works were much longer than expected, and to be honest, it put them at a disadvantage: sometimes “less is more”. I should be stricter for future editions.

At Génération A today, the stakes are different from before. The artists want to know if professionals are going to attend their show, what the future will look like for their work. Performing in Théâtre Paris-Villette shouldn’t be the ultimate goal: the objective is for the works to circulate.

How did your work with the artists unfold between The Lab and Génération A #3?

Remember that The Lab is a lateral programme of Génération A, which was founded in 2017. In 2022, my Startup Forum proposal – The Lab – was to connect three Aerowaves companies from the African (Fubunation, Smaïl Kanouté and Lois Alexander) with three companies for the 2024 edition of Génération A. All six companies presented their works in Senegal, at the Duo Solo Danse festival in 2023.

After The Lab in Senegal, artist feedback was highly positive. Having time to think and follow through the works made a real difference. I stayed in touch with Aerowaves – Anna Arthur and Betsy Gregory, as well as Tina Hollard from Startup Forum 2022 – and also with Freddie Opoku-Addaie from Dance Umbrella in London.

Did Génération A #3 meet your expectations as a curatorial experience?

 What’s cool is that, as well as regulars, new faces and first-timers, there are more professionals coming. The festival is a more established now, which makes it easier to spot. This year we had not only solos and duets, we also had group works. Vagabundus by Idio Chichava, from Mozambique, was part of Benjamin Millepied’s Paris Dance Project in Saint-Ouen and in La Villette two days before Génération A. It also went to Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels, Passage festival in Metz, June Events in Paris‑Vincennes and Les Rencontres à l’échelle in Marseille. It’s quite exceptional. The other pieces don’t really tour after the festival in Paris and that’s one of our big issues. We also have a loyal audience, and that’s terrific, but there are still difficulties tapping into the dance network, because of its strong pyramidal structure. You need to wait for certain people to vouch for you to get more attention. It’s hard. As I said on Génération A opening night, the venues still need to work with each other more on co-ordination and co-operation.

 How did this experience bring you to reflect on your curatorial work?

 This year raised a lot of questions for me. At some point, I wondered if my company should assume a distribution role. But that’s neither what I do nor what I want to do. I am very happy when professionals are interested in programming our artists (it already happened with Wesley Ruzibiza and Vincent Harisdo’s east African Bolero in the 2021 edition). But I feel that my work aims to allow curators and programmers to open their eyes and ears to works and artists they don’t know, without considering them emerging artists, and always keeping high expectations. I also want to question our artistic viewpoints and practices. Sometimes, we should be more careful about storytelling – the journey is for an artist from Burkina Faso is not the same as one from Burundi. However, our current edition was just as hard to fund as the first one, which we started working on in 2014. So ten years on, we face some of the same obstacles. This kind of project is faced with great financial difficulties. And if decisions regarding future cultural affairs are made by the far right in France, it will most certainly be hard to keep projects like ours running.

Before reaching Paris, Gaël Kafuma NDécky, El Hadj Malick Ndiaye and Agathe Djokam Tamo stopped in London to perform a double-bill at The Place. How did this pre-festival show go? Did it open new perspectives for Génération A to go beyond Paris in the future?

 We have the Aerowaves 2022 Startup Forum in Elefsina to thank for this project. The meetings there made me feel that what I was doing mattered. On the last day, I met Eddie Nixon, artistic director at The Place, London. Months later, when I sent my newsletter and preprogramme to the Aerowaves partners, he said that it would be great to think together about what we could do. So we had a long discussion – the kind I like – about how we could build a project that would be enriching for both of us. I didn’t know The Place, or even London, but I had a full programme with guest artists. Initially, we wanted to showcase four pieces, but in the end we could only afford two.

We were warmly welcomed by The Place. The artists were given precious time to rehearse and get accustomed to the local regulations. Since the artists were coming to Paris afterwards, it allowed to reduce the international travel costs covered by Théâtre Paris-Villette. This kind of partnership was much easier to work on than organizing an artist’s tour with other venues in France. It changed a lot of things in the way I felt heard. I would love to do it again somewhere else in Europe.