ABSTRACT
On 19th December 2010, L’Epopée de Sunjata Keïta [the Sunjata Keïta Epic] was performed in the recently refurbished Salle Lamissa Bengaly in Sikasso, one of the main towns in southeastern Mali. Members of state-sponsored artistic ensembles of Mali, including dancers, comedians and musicians, enacted the famous gest of the thirteenth-century Emperor Sunjata Keïta to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the country’s independence as well as the opening of the Artistic and Cultural Biennale. The 70 minute-long piece blended dance, music, acting and singing. Expressing themselves in bamanan kan, the Malian national language, and through dance steps and body movements, the cast conveyed to the audience a choreographical version of this canon of African oral literature narrated by “griots” (storytellers) until today.
