The TransAmériques Festival and the OFFTA in Montreal are vibrating again

This is Reincarnation, by Nigerian choreographer Qudus Onikeku, who opened the FTA ball on Wednesday night. Presented through Saturday, this show full of passion for life energy features 10 performers and a musical duo.

This work uses a variety of styles – afrobeat, dancehall, hip -hop, capoeira or even funky house – to evoke the life cycle, where birth, death, return to life follow each other. … A rebirth similar to Africa.

When I talk about reincarnation, I am talking about the fact that we can include all the past amnesia, knowledge and power that has been suffocated by colonization.explained Qudus Onikeku, who trained at the National School of Circus Arts in France.

Make way for Africa

Reincarnation records the vitality of youth – more than 60% of Nigeria’s population is under 25 years old – along with dancers and dancers whose bodies have a memory, according to the 1984 -born choreographer.

What fascinates me with this new youth who took its fate into its own hands and began to create is the relationship with time that their bodies have.said one who had never seen one of his creations before being presented in Montreal.

Even if they don’t know the things that happened before them, the body, in a somewhat magical way, brings back all the things of the past.

For Qudus Onikeku, young Africans have great creative freedom, especially thanks to the immense playground made up of smart phones and social networks.

” Young people are very inventive, because you have to be innovative to survive in Africa. “

Another African choreographer who responded to this year’s FTA invitation: Ivorian Nadia Beugré, who focused on the representation of masculinity in the rare manfrom June 29 to 1.

From June 3 to 5, the room Traces – Speaking in African Countries combining Senegalese intellectual Felwine Sarr and Burkinabe theater man Étienne Minoungou.

Also from Burkina Faso, Odile Sankara and Aristide Tarnagda offer a theatrical reading of the novel until Saturday. The most secret memories of menwhich won the Goncourt 2021 prize for its author Mohamed Mbougar Sarr.

Raising ecological awareness

The dangers threatening the planet have inspired several works presented in the FTA. Until Sunday, a giant aquarium is installed on the Quiet esplanade of the Quartier des spectacles. American Lars Jan thinks, this five -hour free performance, titled Holoscenesoccurring under water.

I became interested in water to think about our future, he said. Because we can imagine climate change in terms of floods, droughts, sea level rise, rain floods that can damage crops.

As for Brazilian artist Gabriela Carneiro da Cunha, she offers, along with her performance Altamira 2042a sound dive into the ecosystem of an Amazon river damaged by the construction of a dam.

A play on the feeling of incompetence in front of the system

Creators from Quebec are also part of this year’s FTA program. We saw in particular Montreal choreographer Catherine Gaudet and her show The good stuffdirector Alix Dufresne associated with playwright Étienne Lepage for Diseases of civilizationas well as choreographer Mélanie Demers and dancer Angélique Wilkie in Public confession at The virus and the victimby Pierre Lefebvre.

This piece, with an introductory letter written to someone in power, was aired Friday night at the FTA, and it’s until Tuesday before heading to Quebec. Quebecer Benoît Vermeulen directs it.

When I discovered this piece, I was really shocked, because it is a very clear, clever, sensitive and funny statement on our anxiety in the face of a political and economic system we have created, but in the face of it we can do nothing, explanation by Benoît Vermeulen. No matter what we move, it will not change.

Not just a rant or attack, this is really how I deal with this system.

Safia Nolin of OFFTA

Organized in conjunction with the FTA, the OFFTA festival will run until June 5. Every day, people can open the door of the telephone box installed at Place de la Paix, in the entertainment district, and pick up the handset to discover the project with participation Cabin / Track.

Other works awaiting the public: one personbased on recordings made by a young woman of her grandmother, a resident of a CHSLD who is losing memory, and The storeoffering visual stories about these businesses struggling to adapt to the pandemic and craze in online shopping.

OFFTA will end June 5 at fire of wara series of musical paintings in which Safia Nolin and visual artist Maryse Goudreau will express their passion for cetaceans.