A Country Misled

Lies can be disconcertingly easy to swallow, especially when they take the form of seemingly innocuous stories recited by kindly-looking men on our television screens. Congolese choreographer Faustin Linyekula is well aware of the dangerous lure of community fictions, and his new performance, Festival of Lies, is a provocative dance and theater installation that addresses the politics of forgetting in both his native Congo and throughout Africa. Linyekula and his company, Les Studios Kabako, interweave fact and fiction in a tantalizing quilt of story and dance. Combining comedy, tragedy, history, and mythology, dancers dazzle spectators with a series of clashing tales, in which personal narrative and political propaganda collide in a violent fray between memory and mass amnesia. But a spectator sport like listening to political yarns isn't complete without proper nourishment, and the piece includes a buffet of food and drink from local African restaurants.

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The show starts tonight at 8 p.m. (and culminates in a six-hour festival and performance on Nov. 10).
Nov. 8-10, 2007