The story of Modou Fata Touré is one of art as rescue. When he was 7, he was sent to a Koranic school in Gambia run by his family. There, he said, he was abused and saw his brothers restrained with chains after they tried to escape. At 13, he ran away to Dakar in nearby Senegal. Living on the streets and begging for food, he was afraid of both being found by his family and not being found.
Touré took refuge in a home for street children called Empire des Enfants, and when a group from Sweden visited the home, he discovered his vocation. The group was Circus Cirkör, and the art they introduced was circus.
“Circus allowed me to move beyond my fears and open up my creativity,” Touré said in French on a recent video call. On Sept. 3, he will make his United States debut with the troupe he eventually founded, Compagnie SenCirk, as part of Down to Earth, a new festival of multidisciplinary performance in public spaces in New York City (Aug. 29-Sept. 7).
Getting to this point was far from easy for Touré. After Circus Cirkör left Dakar, he constructed a unicycle out of junk and kept practicing. When the troupe returned the next year, he told them he wanted a career in circus. They responded that he needed permission from his family — a seemingly impassable barrier.
One day, while rollerblading, Touré latched onto the back of a car. The driver turned out to be one of his brothers, who recognized him in the rearview mirror before Touré darted off. The brother tracked him to Empire des Enfants and told him their father was dead, which was liberating news. Touré’s mother helped him with the arrangements to study circus in Sweden.
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