L’Opéra du villageois

In a performance that blends music and dance and intertwines politics and rituals, Zora Snake tackles the subject of the restitution of ritual objects considered to be works of art that were stolen during the colonial period.

Born in 1990 in the west of Cameroon, Zobel Raoul trained partly in the streets of Yaoundé, at the crossroads of hip-hop and traditional dance. Under the name Zora Snake, the choreographer and dancer has made the engagement of the body his credo and the act of performance, here and elsewhere, an active ferment. 

Gold and salt – symbols of the history of colonial plundering – resonate with the key debate on art restitution. Using the mask as an object, the performer-researcher highlights ancestral practices, shared aesthetics, differences in the interpretation of singular expressions – in short, the way we look today both from and at Africa across the North/South divide.

After premiering in Paris in 2021, L’Opéra du villageois, whose title brings extremes into dialogue with one another, travelled to France, Belgium, Germany, South Africa and Rwanda. An exploration-performance as much as a ritual, designed for non-theatrical venues, a solo accompanied by live music, choreographed like a sculpture: movement, the legacy of silence, history and the future.