W&L’s Lenfest Center Opens 2024-25 Season with ‘Afrique en Cirque’ The Sept. 24 performance is part of the Lenfest Center’s Outreach & Engagement Series.

By Emily Innes
September 11, 2024

The Lenfest Center at Washington and Lee University presents “Afrique en Cirque” on Tuesday, Sept. 24 at 7:30 p.m. in the Keller Theatre. The daredevil, family-friendly circus is the opening performance of the Lenfest Center’s 2024-25 season, “Expand the Arts!” This unique program is also part of the Lenfest Center’s Outreach & Engagement (O&E) Series, which features stimulating artistic alliances, creative outreach, community engagement collaborations and engaging performance experiences.

Tickets are required and available online or in person at the Lenfest Box Office.

“Afrique en Cirque” is presented by Kalabanté Productions and created by Yamoussa Bangoura, a multidisciplinary artist of Guinean origin and the founder of Kalabanté. The show is inspired by Bangoura’s daily life in Guinea and shares the beauty, youth and artistry of African culture.

Audiences will marvel as acrobats execute gravity-defying moves and human pyramids, accompanied by the contemporary sounds of live Afro-jazz, percussion and kora (a long-neck stringed instrument that combines elements of a harp and lute, historically used in West African storytelling). A colorful show set against vibrant scenery, costumes and staging, “Afrique en Cirque” represents the strength, agility and joys of African youth and makes any theater vibrate with energy.

Bangoura first became interested in the circus arts as a young man growing up in Conakry, Guinea, in the 1990s. He studied the circus performers he saw on European television and practiced on the beach near his home. He also studied the Nyamakala tradition of circus, practiced by the Fula people of West Africa. Bangoura eventually joined Guinea’s original circus company, Circus Baobob, and toured Africa and Europe before joining the Montreal-based Canadian cirque company, Cirque Eloize.

While in Montreal, Bangoura opened Kalabanté Productions in 2007 and recruited many of his extended family members to join the company. The company began performing in Quebec, expanded to all of Canada and the U.S., and now performs around the world. In 2018, Kalabanté Productions opened its own studio and school in Montreal, offering classes in African dance, cirque and drumming.

Kalabanté Productions is proud to share their work, achievements and skills with audiences around the world, and to fulfill its humanitarian mission to help the Guinean community from which Bangoura and many of his company members come.

Order your tickets online today or call the Lenfest Center box office at 540-458-8000 for ticket purchase information. Box office hours are Monday-Friday, 9 a.m.-4 p.m. The cost is $35 for adults, $32 for seniors, $29 for W&L faculty and staff and $8 for students.

This event is sponsored in part by the Class of 1964 Performing Arts Fund and the Department of Theater, Dance, and Film Studies.

For a full list of this season’s performances, visit the Lenfest Center’s website.

The Lenfest Center for the Arts, home of the Department of Theater, Dance, and Film Studies and the Department of Music and Department of Art and Art History is a multi-use facility designed and equipped to accommodate a broad spectrum of the performing arts, including theater, musical theater, opera and operetta, choral and band music, dance and performance art in one energizing complex.