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Biography:

Marcel Gbeffa is the Founder and Artistic Director of the Multicorps Choreographic Center in Cotonou, Benin, where he advocates for greater access and promotion of contemporary dance. The Multicorps Choreographic Center welcomes more than 150 students per year, and provides courses, workshops, as well as choreographic and interdisciplinary residencies. Gbeffa is also the director of the Connexion festival and
the Labo workshops Benin.

Gbeffa trained at the ‘Ecole des Sables’ (Senegal) andbegan his career in 2008 with
his solo “Et si” which launched him internationally at the
Rencontres Chorégraphiques d’Afrique et de l’Océan Indien.
As a performer and assistant choreographer, he has worked and collaborated with
choreographers such as AndreyaOuamba, Marceline Lartigue​, and Reggie Wilson
and has performed in venues as the "Théatre de la ville" in Paris and BAM in New
York.

Since 2010, Gbeffa has been developing his own movement vocabulary, creating
several collaborative works in Benin, Brazil, and throughout Europe. In recent years,
he has worked with Anikaya Dance Theater (USA). Always looking to invent new
forms, his artistic approach is inspired and nourished by the traditional dances, rites,
and rhythms of his Beninese culture and is hybridized through encounters, collaborations and influences from other disciplines. 

Recent major works include DIDE, a piece co-created with visual artist
Sarah Trouche (France) which questions the place of women in society in Africa and
in the world. Meanwhile, his meeting with the performer Violaine Lochu at ‘The
Center’ (Art Center of Cotonou, Benin) during a joint residence during the winter of
2021 gave birth to AWOLI. He also created Mémoire d'Océan, a video installation
which is a dialogue between the souls of enslaved Africans who died during the
transatlantic slave trade and the souls of the young African people who die today
while crossing the ocean to reach Europe.
 
Since 2021, with the support of the French Institute of Benin and the New Aquitaine
Region Fund, he has been working with the performer and visual
artist Violaine Lochu on Hòxo. The piece offers a futuristic vision between the
intertwined histories of France and Benin via slavery and colonization through
Twinning and the Vodoun Hóho cult. In 2023, he will present Chuthulucene, a
collaboration with saxophonist Clement Duthoit around the work of Donna Haraway.​