OFFTA, festival d’arts vivants
Athena Lucie Assamba
The OFFTA is a festival dedicated to emerging and avant-garde creation in the live arts. Created on the fringes of the Festival TransAmériques (FTA), the OFFTA showcases creators whose singular and committed approaches lay the groundwork for new artistic currents. The festival aims to decategorize contemporary artistic practices and their respective audiences. It presents and produces events that challenge established norms and question modes of representation, fostering collaboration and collective experiences.
Athena Lucie Assamba
NKUL NNAM
Athena Lucie Assamba conjures an electrifying encounter between the village and the club. At the confluence of these two worlds emerges a space for emancipatory exploration where collective memories, embodied knowledge and ancestral energies flow freely.
As a true MC, Athena presides over this vibrant ritual, orchestrating rhythms and opening spaces for transformative healing. Ngoma drums, resounding voices and dancing bodies compose an Afrofuturist and transcendent landscape whose vivid energy draws equally from inherited traditions and contemporary textures. Beneath its festive appearance, NKUL NNAM reveals a resolutely political dimension, claiming emancipation and sovereignty.
Performance Athena Lucie Assamba
Music Elli Miller-Maboungou
Costumes and scenography Athena Lucie Assamba, Mona Ronelyam Mayam, Floric Kim
Lighting design Tiffanie Boffa
Outside eye and advice Aichatou Erna Labarang
Photos Amsatou Ndiaye
With the support of Conseils des arts de Montréal, LA SERRE – arts vivants
Creative residency Tangente, dance Immersion, LA SERRE – arts vivants, La Belonne, Maison des cultures Sobo Badè
Special thanks to LA SERRE – arts vivants, Tangente, dance Immersion, Conseil des arts de Montréal, Parbleux, Maison des Cultures Sobo Badè, Aichatou Erna Labarang, all the collaborators and friends who supported me
Video credits Festival Phenomena
Athena Lucie Assamba is a multidisciplinary artist, performer, and choreographer-researcher of Cameroonian origin. Navigating fluidly between traditional and contemporary African dances along with street styles such as waacking, dancehall, ndombolo and afro house, she approaches the body as a space of memory, transmission, and transformation. Informed by her background in neuroscience, she has created several works that probe the connections between movement, consciousness, and healing. She is a member of the Montréal-based collective Afrodojomtl, which fosters the practice, transmission and celebration of Afro-descendant dances.
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