Faustin Linyekula (born February 27, 1974) is a Congolese dancer and choreographer of contemporary dance. His works are structured along the lines of the dance form Ndombolo and its associated music and address "the legacy of decades of war, terror, fear and the collapse of the economy for himself, his family and his friends." Family background Linyekula was born in Ubundu, Zaire, now Democratic Republic of Congo. He was raised in a "multilingual, multicultural" environment, in a Roman Catholic family. Because of the state ideology of the Mobutu Sese Seko regime, the European name, Faustin, could not appear on any legal documents. The justification for this was that European names were imposed on Africans as a form of mental subjugation. Career According to Toba Singer, Linyekula studied literature and theater in Kisangani (in northeast Zaire, his native region). The universities in Zaire were soon shut down; he went to Nairobi, Kenya. In 1997 co-founded the Gàara company with mime Opiyo Okach and dancer Afrah Tenambergen, the first contemporary dance company in Kenya and his first experience as a choreographer. He then traveled to France where he took up a residency first with choreographer Régine Chopinot and then with Mathilde Monnier, and to the Tanzwochen Festival in Vienna, Austria where he and South African dancer Gregory Maqoma created Tales off the Mud Wall (2000). Returning to the Congo, in June 2001 in Kinshasa he established the Studios Kabako, a structure form multidisciplinary creation and performance; Brenda Dixon Gottschild, professor emerita of Dance Studies at Temple University characterizes this as choosing "the path of most resistance," given his opportunities in Europe. In 2003, he choreographed a piece for six hip-hop dancers as part of the Suresnes Cités Danse Festival. The French Centre National de la Danse gave him carte blanche to create a festival in 2005; the result was Le Cargo, in which appear ten African companies mostly presenting their work for the first time in Europe. In 2007, his Festival des mensonges ("Festival of Lies") was presented at the Festival d'Avignon, as well as Dinozord: The Dialogue Series (2006). ″Le Cargo″, his first solo (2011) is still touring in Europe (Vienna, Paris, Grenoble, Brussels, Ostende, Genk, Athens, Geneva, Salzburg, Umea, Gdansk, Lisbon…), Africa (Tunis, Johannesburg, Kinshasa, Lubumbashi, Nouakchott, Dakar, Ouagadougou, Lusaka, Yaoundé, Douala, Niamey, Zinder, Djibouti, Kampala, Accra, Bata…), North America (New York, Portland, Minneapolis, Burlington - Vermont, Ottawa and Vancouver),