12 hours ago
5
Two Lagos-based Nigerian dancers and choreographers, Pearse Olufemi and Rasheed Ibrahim, will be hosted in Yaoundé, Cameroon at the 16th edition of the “Corps é Gestes”, an International Performance Dance Festival, where they will be performing their award-winning contemporary dance piece titled: ‘FEMME’ at the National Museum Cameroon.
The festival which begins on Wednesday, and ends on Saturday, November 23, aims to bring together the best dancers and choreographers of Africa in diverse platforms to showcase performances featuring artists from Cameroon, Chad, France, Nigeria and Tunisia.
Olufemi, a recipient of Goethe Institut Support and Connect – Arts and Cultural Travel Grant 2024/2025, will be attending and facilitating a masterclass dance workshop as part of the festival, and thereafter, showcase ‘FEMME’, a performance and conversation dance piece with Rasheed Ibrahim.
The director of Festival Corps é Gestes, Dr. Annie Tchawack, a researcher at the independent worker, anthropologist, cultural artist, trainer and facilitator has continuously brought together notable dancers and choreographers in Africa on this platform to showcase the richness of its continent’s diverse and unique cultures and at the same time taking the opportunity to address issues and challenges faced in her immediate community in order to reduce the decadence within the society’s and world at large.
The festival utilises arts and cultural performances with an exhibition at the encounter, as a medium to proffer solutions to solve recurrent challenges faced in the day-to-day activities, just as the theme for this year’s festival: “Woman and Trauma Healing”.
Healing from trauma can be a different journey for everyone, but there are many avenues, resources and strategies that can help to aid the process which Dr. Annie Tchawack will be exploring using different forms of arts by selecting specific dance performance works around Africa and in Diaspora such as ‘FEMME’ that resonates with the thematic focus of the international encounter.
The dance piece ‘FEMME’ which loosely translates in French as “woman-man”, a research-based and collaborative artistic dish is a highly intense dance expression that evaluates human perception, and beliefs about gender misrepresentation and invigorates deeper knowledge of gender equity.
It would be recalled that Olufemi and Rasheed Ibrahim’s showcasing of ‘FEMME’ at the 16th Edition of International Encounter Festival Corps é Gestes, to be held in Yaoundé, Cameroon, received support through the Support and Connect Initiative 2024/2025 from Goethe Institut Nigeria.
Please follow and like us:
