Over ten years after the cre­ation of her first piece, Quart­i­ers Libres, Nadia Beu­gré is com­ing back to the solo form. The Ivori­an cho­reo­graph­er now turns her atten­tion to the land of her child­hood, between col­lect­ive memory and intim­ate recollections.

The idea for this new piece came to Beu­gré in 2020, while she was work­ing on the men’s quin­tet L’homme rare, at the end of which she took to the stage, naked and with her back to the audi­ence, on a white loin­cloth, and played a few notes on the har­mon­ica before dark­ness fell on the aud­it­or­i­um. The con­clu­sion of this piece (which was presen­ted at the ccncn in June 2024) appears to her as the start of a new jour­ney, this time a sol­it­ary one, which takes her to Yikakou, the vil­lage of her ancest­ors in Côte d’Ivoire. It’s an impossible return, for this secret, fant­ast­ic vil­lage no longer exists: its lands – which were deemed cursed – are now covered by forest, but the jour­ney fol­lows oth­er traces. Those of the grand­moth­er, first of all: Gbahi­hon­on, the “woman who says what she sees”, a woman of know­ledge, who pro­tec­ted the small com­munity against phys­ic­al or mys­tic­al attacks, and knew how to fore­tell the des­tiny of new­borns. Those of oth­er power­ful women fol­low, often unac­know­ledged but who made and defeated empires and lin­eages, like the oracle Dô-Kamissa, at the ori­gin of the legendary epic of Soundi­ata that has spanned over cen­tur­ies. Inhab­ited by these voices, the cho­reo­graph­er sur­rounds her­self with a female gri­ot, the bear­er of for­got­ten tales, and a musi­cian and sing­er, who will echo and bear wit­ness to her story.