Faustin Linyekula’s ‘My Body, My Archive’
As a first-time visitor to OZ Arts Nashville, I have to say it offers a unique feel. The experience starts when you walk in the door, as if you were walking the aisles of a museum. This is because OZ Arts Nashville is much more than a stage. It is a space for expanded understanding and appreciation of the human experience. What once used to be the headquarters of the Ozenger’s family cigar company was transformed into a living relic of their dedication to artistry, expression, and community. Opening in 2013, they have brought contemporary art, performances, and events to the Nashville area, always giving back and enriching the wider community in the process.

The building itself offers a story, making Faustin Linyekula’s work in My Body, My Archive very suitable for its stage. Linyekula is a Congolese storyteller who powerfully combines creative mediums, bringing something different. The audience was taken to the past, and then brought back into the present moment many times. It was theater, dance, and documentary. It is no surprise he has received many awards, the most recent being the 2019 Tällberg/Eliasson Global Leadership Prize. The closest companion to Linyekula during this work, besides his ancestors, was that Afro-futuristic musician Heru-Shabaka-Ra, famously from the Sun Ra Arkestra. There were natural sounds or birds and water, drum circles, and other music interwoven with the experience but the live accompaniment of Heru-Shabaka-Ra through the trumpet made it whole. He too was connected to the greater story and embodied every feeling, connecting with the rhythm of the drums himself through dance, and crying out with sorrow and joy through the use of his body and trumpet as an instrument.
Linyekula’s dance style appeared seamlessly improvised. It all felt too real to be mimicked step by step. Due to my fascination with dances and their origins, an association I made early on was that of drum circles and dance being used as a way to invoke and connect with spirits of ancestors. I never got to confirm with Linyekula if my interpretation is correct, but from him speaking about his dance, I know it is the correct interpretation for me. Everyone who experiences art will have a different interpretation. We make meaning where we need to make it. All he wishes is that the individual is able to connect in a way that is meaningful for them.

I noticed energy shifts in the room through the combination of him dancing and the music all around. There were eight sculptures of the lost women in his family that I would consider the center of the story. I admired throughout the show how he cherished the sculptures, picked them up, and held them with so much care. In addition to that I started observing one of the sculptures more and got this overwhelming feeling that she was important and powerful. It felt as though through Linyekula going through so much time intentionally exploring his lost family heritage, especially of the past eight generations of women, I was able to connect to them by his dance bringing them back to life. I wrote down in my notebook “It’s like the voices of the women screaming. Their spirits are calling for help. There’s so much pain. What happened was terrible.” I later looked into what happened to women in the Congo and I would encourage others to do the same. I am grateful Linyekula went on this journey to connect to his ancestors whose history was never written down. They seem to have a lot to share, and through them Linyekula is able to teach in a truly embodied way. My Body, My Archive makes perfect sense to me. Whether others in the room had similar experiences, I do not know, but I know how his work will forever change the way I connect to my own heritage through movement.

The themes in his production were also prevalent in his movement masterclass, which was given at the Global Education Center. It aimed to teach improvisation, not mimicry. It was not a learning of choreography. It was an exploration of self. At the end of class Linyekula had everyone introduce themselves. Everyone said their name, daughter/son of xyz, granddaughter/grandson of xyz. That was valuable to me, both saying it and hearing it from others. Going back to the title of the production My Body, My Archive, the individual is the center. Linyekula said part of the reason why he does his dance this way is because in the Congo it was a Dictatorship, meaning there was no individual. In this way his dance is an act of embodied resistance and a reclamation of what was taken away from his ancestors. I would argue it is a way to heal generational traumas, for his body holds the memories of his ancestors, as we all do. If the trauma went unhealed it will continue to be passed on upon the next generation to be worked through or added upon. This understanding is what Linyekula’s work did for me, and I would encourage dancers and non-dancers alike to follow Linyekula’s work. We can all learn through his work, and the message will be different, but I feel assured it will be exactly what the individual needs.