WKcollective | Wanjiru Kamuyu || associate company
Paris | France
WKcollective creates immersive, visceral experiences through the medium of contemporary dance. Project-based works weave stories and express the universal experience.
Collaboration across artistic disciplines opens discourse and intrigue through the power of poetic expression in vocal and physical movement.
Founded by choreographer Wanjiru Kamuyu in 2009, WKcollective attracts multidisciplinary artists of diverse cultural backgrounds to the creative canvas.
Drawing upon these art forms to stimulate fresh, innovative, vulnerable, raw, graphic art to generate personal and social reflection through a transformative celebration with dance.
Wanjiru Kamuyu, born in Nairobi/Kenya, obtained a Master of Fine Arts at the Temple University (Philadelphia, USA). Based in Paris since 2007, she started her career in New York. As a dance performer, she developed a rich and diverse curriculum fostering her choreographic development and teachings.
Between New York and Paris, on international theatre stages, she worked with contemporary choreographers such as Bill T. Jones, Irène Tassembedo, Robyn Orlin, Nathalie Pubellier, Stefanie Batten Bland, Bartabas and more. For musical productions, Wanjiru collaborated with Jérôme Savary (À la recherche de Joséphine) and Julie Taymor (Lion King) and also the film director Christian Faure (Fais danser la poussière). Versatile, her dance brought her to a collaboration with French post-modern creator Jean-Paul Goude.
As a choreographer, Wanjiru worked with Jérôme Savary and develops projects for refugees with New World Theatre (USA), Euroculture (project for 65 young artists and 11 refugees from Soudan, Syria, Libya and Afghanistan).
She realized commissions for director Hassane Kassi Kouyaté (Burkina Faso) and number of universities in the USA (Mills College, Stephens College, Wayne State University, University of Michigan) and dance companies.
Her own company works are internationally acclaimed: USA, France, Italy, Irland, Burkina Faso, South Africa, Ruanda, Mozambique. Those works have been developed residencies in France, the USA and Ireland.
Wanjiru teaches master classes and choreography workshops in Europe, North America and in Africa.
WKcollective is associate company to camin aktion. Since season 2021/22, Wanjiru Kamuyu is associate artist at theatre, dance- and art center L’Onde in Vélizy (Paris).
Photo © Mathieu Waddell