Épique ! (pour Yikakou)

Nadia Beugré is one of the defining choreographers exploring artistic and social borderlands between Africa and Europe. In her choreographies, rawness and warmth repeatedly collide. In her latest piece, she returns to the place of her childhood in Côte d’Ivoire – Yikakou. But the village no longer exists; it has long been overtaken by forest, the fields have dried up, and among them lie the overgrown graves of her ancestors. Yikakou lives on only in memory. What remains of a place that has already disappeared? Inspired by her great-grandmother Gbahihonon (‘the woman who says what she sees’), Nadia Beugré follows in the footsteps of powerful female figures from her homeland. Épique ! (pour Yikakou) opens up a space to listen to the voices of the ancestors, a polyphonic echo of intimate and collective memories. Accompanied by the griotte Charlotte Dali, a guardian of forgotten stories, and by the balafon music of Salimata Diabate, she tells of an “impossible return” and renders forgotten voices perceptible once more. A performance ritual that celebrates the force of female resilience – tender, direct, and mesmerizing in its presence.

Nadia Beugré, born in 1981 in Côte d’Ivoire, is a dancer and choreographer. Trained in traditional dance, she became a founding member of Béatrice Kombé’s groundbreaking all-female ensemble TchéTché, touring across Africa, Europe, and North America. She later developed her own practice, studying choreography at the Centre Chorégraphique National de Montpellier. In 2012, she began creating her own works, in which she radically challenges social norms of identity, gender, and representation. In 2020, she founded Libr’Arts, a platform for training and creation between Montpellier and Abidjan.