I RACCONTI DI PENDA

I RACCONTI DI PENDA is a storytelling performance with live music, based on stories from the African oral tradition collected by the company in the early 2000s during a long period of theatrical activity in Burkina Faso. Entrusted to memory and passed down through the centuries, these tales come back to life on Italian stages thanks to the griot Souleymane Diabaté, who accompanies Bintou Ouattara, a Burkinabè storyteller and dancer, with a striking acoustic soundscape made up of instruments with warm, deep tones and richly flavoured voices.

“My grandmother’s name was Penda, and she always used to tell me that…” is the opening line that ritually introduces Penda’s tales: a warm journey into the embrace of a theatricality of music and language, capable of lulling us into a state of hypnosis, accompanied by the precise and elegant gestures of an intense and captivating performer.

Three clear and vivid tales unfold in a spiral-like movement, taking flight to reveal the collective imagination of entire peoples and our shared sense of belonging to humankind—so that oblivion may not prevail over memory.