Bintou Dembélé

Bintou Dembélé is a dancer and a choreographer who is recognized as one of the pioneer figures of Hip hop dance in France. After having danced for more than thirty years in the Hip Hop world, Bintou Dembélé has been the artistic director of her own dance company Rualité since 2002.

Beginnings

Bintou Dembélé was born on 30 March 1975 in the suburbs of Paris to a family who emigrated to France after Sub-Saharan Africa's decolonization. in which was born several collectives of rappers and dancers. While in middle school, Bintou Dembélé also joined the dance groups Aktuel Force (in 1993 and 1997) and Mission Impossible (1994-1996) in which she diversified her Hip Hop dancing by learning House Dance, New Style, Break Dancing... etc. She also takes part in different shows in nightclubs in Belgium, at Le Palace (Paris), le Bataclan or Le Divan du Monde. The same year, she also created her own dance compagny, named Rualité. In 2010, she created her first solo show entitled Mon appart' en dit long (My apartment tells a lot about it), in which she explored the notion of femininity, spatiality and daughter-mother relationship. In 2011, she choreographed the music video of the song Roméo kiffe Juliette of the French slam singer Grand Corps Malade. As a recognized dancer with both a street and professional background, Dembélé participates as a judge in various battles and other Hip Hop dance competitions and trains dancers as interprets for live performances all over the world.

Bintou Dembélé's commitment to the development of the Hip Hop culture and to the recognition and legitimacy of its actors in the French public spaces and common discourse led her to integrate the SeFeA laboratory organized by Université Sorbonne Nouvelle - Paris 3 in 2014. In September 2016, she is hosted by the Gender and Women studies department of the University of California, Berkeley in a conference to talk about the video documentary of her performance Z.H. In the French and francophone contexts, Bintou Dembélé's work can be related to the one of Maboula Soumahoro, Alice Diop or Isabelle Boni-Claverie. Bintou Demélé is one of the spokesperson of the scholars Mame-Fatou Niang and Kaytie Nielsen recent documentary Mariannes Noires (Black Mariannes) whose aim is to give voice and make visible Afro-French female identities.