Queer Sagittarius, born in Minsk (Belarus) to a Rwandan mother and a Togolese father, Alphonse Eklou Uwantege is a director and performer working between Brussels, Antwerp, Paris and Kigali.

Before theatre and choreography, there were the Scouts, architecture, modelling, five years behind a bar, a jazz music school. There were failures too, worlds left behind without ever quite leaving them.

Inhabiting a space. Watching the bodies that move through it. Serving people. Discipline and indiscipline. That is what they hold a stage with.

Their pieces start from documentary material and sometimes take the form of ceremonies, somewhere between care and confrontation. They build them with materials that travelled long before reaching the stage: coffee, soil, sugar, salt, water. You touch them, sometimes taste them. The audience is never neutral: it is asked to take a position.

The first part of a triptych, restes (offrande au million) is a ritual for their uncle Alphonse Kanimba, murdered during the genocide against the Tutsi in 1994. Alphonse carries his name. With failles (OQT), they are creating a piece for their father, Koffi Logossou Daniel Eklou. In 2003, the two of them received an order to leave Belgian territory. Starting from these two stories, their work traces administrative, colonial and racial violence, the kind that settles into bodies and is passed down from one generation to the next. 

Who has the right to care, to justice, to mobility?

Alphonse has collaborated with artists such as Anthea Hamilton, Benjamin Abel Meirhaeghe, Castélie Yalombo and Oscar Murillo. In fashion and image, they have worked with Rick Owens, Issey Miyake, Pierre Debusschere and Victoire Karera Kampire.

Holding a master’s degree from ISAC-ArBA-EsA (Brussels), they also pass on their practice through workshops. Their projects have been presented at Atelier 210,Théâtre de la Vie, Workspace Brussels, WP Zimmer, Bâtard Festival (Beursschouwburg), Cifas, Love at First Sight (Monty, Antwerp) and Rencontres à l’Échelle (Marseille), with the support of the Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles. In 2026, they were selected for Plat(e)form(e), shortlisted for the Roel Verniers Prize, and invited to the Isôoko Great Lakes Festival in Kigali.