Dilo Paulo, born in Angola but now working from Brazil, did a solo dance show called Ekesa Sanko for June Events 2025. “Ekesa Sanko” is a man who has lost his past. He decides to wander and, as a wanderer, renew his sense of where he comes from, understand his present and decide his future. A story with just enough irony to makes sense.
Strong and frankly beautiful African body glistening with thick white greasepaint tattoos – pips like pearls arced over large eyes, Fibonacci spirals on the breast, a thick arrow up the spine, long lines streaked down the arms – Dilo Paulo dances inside a mix of stirring ballads and Martin Luther King’s I-have-a-dream speech. I remember that speech, remember watching it on TV, remember some of us heard a unusual wave slop on the hard sand of a faraway beach – Times They Are A-Changin’.
Dilo Paulo makes his body the sinew of perception. Every tick of the man, every kick, every reach, every crouch uncovers new views, reveals. That man can dance! I think, choreographer Amala Dianor should make Dilo Paulo Christ in the former’s hip hop shot at Carlo Gesualdo‘s darkly baroque Tenebrae Reponsoria (Passion of Christ). Then – just a second has passed since I wandered – Dilo Paulo breaks in. Out on the meadow, he is showing how he flies.
On the strain of his powerful muscles, Dilo Paulo rises off the yellow-green grass.
In the force of Paulo’s elegance, I see how a human does it.
They plunge against the air, plunge against the grasp of the earth. There’s no hope of teasing the sun, let alone of breaching the stars. They stay aloft not even the blink of an eye, yet a human’s flight is clean, clear and, especially, right. As Dilo Paulo’s feet slap the earth, how perfectly, perfectly true, a human may fly.
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I saw Dilo Paulo’s “Ekesa Sanko” inside the Atelier de Paris performance space on 7 June and again on 10 June 2025 from a picnic table in the meadow in front of the Théâtre de l’Aquarium. Both places are part of the Cartoucherie grounds in the Bois de Vincennes. “Ekesa Sanko” was part of the June Events 2025 program and jointly produced with Saison Brésil-France 2025, an international culture program that features work from one of 100 countries every two years.
Dilo Paulo performed “Ekesa Sanko” assisted by Lenna Siqueira, artistic director of the dance troupe Corpus Entre Mundos, and producer Sergio Bacelar of Movimento Internacional de Dança et Instituto Bem Cultural. Along with Lenna Siqueira, Dilo Paulo – in 2011 named best dancer in his native Angola – is founder of the dance exchange program Intercâmbio de Dança Angola e Brasil. He today lives in Brasilia, where he manages the dance platform Ngangu Dance.
Other June Events 2025 performers
Click on the name to know more: Habib Ben Tanfous, Julie Botet, Jeanne Brouaye, Puma Camillê, Gilles Clément et Christian Ubl, Victoria Côté Péléja, Rosalind Crisp, Florencia Demestri et Samuel Lefeuvre, Simon Feltz, Geisha Fontaine et Pierre Cottreau, Cassiel Gaube, Yan Giraldou et Amélie Malleroni, Linda Hayford, Rémy Héritier, Marie-Caroline Hominal, Mohamed Issaoui, Rebecca Journo, Wanjiru Kamuyu, Daniel Larrieu, Joanne Leighton, Candice Martel, Ikue Nakagawa, Alban Ovanessian, Dilo Paulo, Pierre Pontvianne, Manuel Roque, Nina Santes, Liz Santoro et Pierre Godard, Jéssica Teixeira, Vânia Vaneau, Louise Vanneste