Residency opening: Boloko de Karel Kouelany

Karel Kouelany, a Congolese krump dancer and choreographer, has been the founder and director of the PIIRAMIID company since 2023. His first group piece, Les Vides Denses, premiered in Brussels in 2025, depicts everyday life in the Congo, a mix of passivity, anticipation and collective joy, and is currently touring in France and Africa.

He is now presenting BOLOKO, his first solo piece currently in development, to the public. Boloko means ‘prison’ in Lingala. Through krump, speech, breath and music, he explores how a body can become the voice of a people faced with constraints, violence and the inability to move freely. Here, the prison is both real and mental: that of a territory, of a system, but also of the limitations we carry within ourselves.

The project draws on the energy of krump and the trance-like states found in African traditions to bring to the surface what cannot be put into words. It prompts reflection on the experiences of the Congolese diaspora and artists in exile. A preliminary stage was presented in Toubab Dialaw in April 2025.