HISTORY

Ballet Lisanga Congolese Performing Arts Company was created in 2004 to preserve and promote the Congolese performance tradition and to carry on the work of their teachers. Artistic director, Renee Puckett was a member and assistant director to the late Malonga Casquelourd’s cherished Fua Dia Congo Dance Company and the Ceedo Senegalese Dance Company.

The Congo, on the continent of Africa, is often mistaken as a country when it actually consists of two neighboring countries in Central Africa that are divided by the Congo River. The smaller of the two countries, the Republic of the Congo, sometimes called Congo-Brazzaville, is a former French colony to the west, whereas the Democratic Republic of the Congo, also referred to as Congo-Kinshasa (formerly Zaire), the third largest country on the African continent, was a Belgian colony.