“With time I’ve come to accept that ruins are the sole heritage History and my fathers left me. Ruins around me, ruins inside. So I started looking at my dance as an attempt to remember my name. Whether in Batanaba, a journey to my maternal grandfather’s birthplace triggered by New York’s Metropolitan Museum or in Histoire(s) du théâtre 2, my latest work revisiting the birth of the National Ballet of Zaire, I am but looking into a broken mirror to reconstruct a face. My face.”--Faustin Linyekula

Dancer, choreographer, and storyteller Faustin Linyekula delivers a free, public lecture as part of the Fall 2019 Intra-Disciplinary Seminar series and in partnership with Open Society Foundations. Linyekula lives in Kisangani, North-East of DR Congo, where he runs the Studios Kabako, a space dedicated to dance, visual theatre, and film, as well as to developing programs with communities of the Lubunga district around water, sustainability, and environmental issues. Linyekula’s work, obsessively addressing Congo’s history, is touring worldwide. His accolades include the Principal Award of the Prince Claus Fund for Culture and Development (2007), the first Prize of the American Curry Stone Foundation (2014) and the First Soros Arts Fellowship (2017). In 2016, Linyekula was associate artist of the city of Lisbon, and in 2019, of the Holland Festival.

The Fall 2019 IDS Lecture Series at The Cooper Union is organized by Leslie Hewitt and Omar Berrada. The IDS Public Lecture Series is part of the Robert Lehman Visiting Artist Program at The Cooper Union. We are grateful for major funding and support from the Robert Lehman Foundation for the series. The IDS Public Lecture Series is also made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.