For the past twenty years, Rennes-based company Dounia, led by singer and choreographer Fatima Leghzal, has been exploring the links between dance, music and memory. Emerging from the continuation of Danses en Héritages, a project devoted to dances from diasporic cultures, this new creation brings to the stage the diversity of dances that are transmitted and reinvented. The trio behind Bab’el Dañs weaves, together with the audience, a genuine dialogue in shared creation, between sonic, rhythmic and choreographic materials. The individual body joins the collective body in this festive closing event for this year’s Les Tombées de la Nuit.
A DJ set by Kris Nolly will close out the day, and the festival!
For the past twenty years, Rennes-based company Dounia, led by singer and choreographer Fatima Leghzal, has been exploring the links between dance, music and memory. Emerging from the continuation of Danses en Héritages, a project devoted to dances from diasporic cultures, this new creation brings to the stage the diversity of dances that are transmitted and reinvented. The trio behind Bab’el Dañs weaves, together with the audience, a genuine dialogue in shared creation, between sonic, rhythmic and choreographic materials. The individual body joins the collective body in this festive closing event for this year’s Les Tombées de la Nuit.
A DJ set by Kris Nolly will close out the day, and the festival!
BIOGRAPHY
> COMPAGNIE DOUNIA / FATIMA LEGHZAL (FR)
Compagnie Dounia was founded in 2003 at the initiative of Franco-Algerian dancer and choreographer Fatima Leghzal, first within the Bagolo Fo collective, before becoming an association in 2005. Rooted in Rennes and Brittany but open to the wider world, the company combines West African dance, Maghrebi inheritances and contemporary forms to create spaces of encounter and transmission, while exploring the links between dance, music and memory. Through stage creations and cultural projects connected to local territories — Rennes, Cesson-Sévigné, Chartres-de-Bretagne and Saint-Jacques-de-la-Lande — the company has built a strong territorial network, developing participatory, itinerant and unpredictable projects that connect stage and place, such as Mana Dialogue (2005), D’ici ou d’ailleurs and Moha le fou Moha le sage (2006), Transe en danse (2007), L’esprit du cercle (2009), Afro Breizh (2015), L’Arbre à Palabre (2016), Hijra (2018), Judhuur (2020), XY (2021), Danses en Héritage.S (2023) and Bab’el Dañs (2025).
DISTRIBUTION
Fatima Leghzal (choreographer and performer), Ronan Desprès (drums, percussion) and Kriss Nolly (vinyl DJing).
PRODUCTION
Co-productions
Centre Social des Champs Manceaux, Espace Simone Iff, Maison de quartier de Villejean, Les Arts Improvisés
Support
Danse à Tous les Étages, CCNRB – Centre chorégraphique national de Rennes et de Bretagne, MJC de Cleunay, DIDA Rennes, MJC de Bréquigny, Centre Social Ker Yann
Financial support
Région Bretagne, Ville de Rennes, Département d’Ille-et-Vilaine, SPEDIDAM, ADAMI, DRAC, Préfecture, Contrat de Ville
