After getting a degree in graphic design from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, in 2012, I made my first foray into dance in Raphaëlle Delaunay’s Bitter Sugar and Radhouane El Meddeb’s Heroes, which was staged in the Panthéon, in 2015. Through my travels to Brazil, Japan, Mali, Benin and Europe, I have since become a self-taught dancer. In 2016, I founded my own company, Compagnie Vivons, to pursue my exploration of graphic design and dance, two disciplines that I have combined through numerous projects to form new ways of thinking. I use dance to speak of current or past issues, through short films, performances, stage productions and cross-cultural works. I develop multidisciplinary projects that unite the worlds of contemporary art and dance, tackling various issues from a holistic perspective. I usually start this process by making a short dance film; I then address the theme that it raises by creating a performance around it and round off the project with one or more graphic or plastic artworks. For the past two years, I have been reflecting on the condition of the Black community around the world with a trilogy of works across eras. Each component of this three-fold project is built around a short film and a choreographed play. I started the journey in New York City by producing Never Twenty One, a short film on armed violence. I then turned my focus to hybridized African-Japanese identity with the story of an enslaved man-turned-samurai and personal bodyguard to Oda Nobunaga. I concluded this triptych of dance-based short films in Benin, in King Toyigbe’s kingdom of Hloua-Bah. Here, I drew inspiration from the philosophy of the Voodoo dances performed by the Sô Ava lakeside community, which I reinterpreted within natural environments such as water, air, earth, and fire. Smaïl Kanouté graduated with a diploma in graphic design from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. He is also a self-taught dancer who directs and produces short films, a number of which have been shown at the MAC in Lyon and at the MEP. The stage adaptation of his short films Never Twenty One and Yasuke Kurosan is currently touring in France and around the world. His short film Sô Ava was shown at New York’s Summerstage on July 14, 2022. Kanouté also completed a residency at Villa Medicis, with Chris Cyrille, in March 2022, and worked with Simon Rouby and Native Maqari in the Goutte-d’Or project as part of the “Mondes Nouveaux” (“New Worlds”) program, and developed an online webdoc series, Je danse donc je suis (“I dance, therefore I am”), featuring guest appearances by Oxmo Puccino and Mory Sacko, among others.
