ÉPIQUE ! (FOR YIKAKOU)

Nadia Beugré was a founding member of Tché Tche – Béatrice Kombé’s exclusively female dance ensemble with which she toured Africa, Europe, and North America, before training at Germaine Acogny’s École des Sables as well as at the Centre Chorégraphique de Montpellier. She founded her own dance company Libr’Arts in 2020, a platform for research, production and training between Montpellier and Abidjan. Since 2012, her work has relentlessly explored margins and peripheries, questioning assignments, forbidden spaces, the roles you give and the roles you take.

Singer, dancer, musician and percussionist Charlotte Dali started her career, back in 2002, at the Aninka Company and later with Kenzo before she dedicated herself to zouglou – a popular urban musical genre that emerged in Ivory Coast at the start of the 1990s and which reflects the social reality of the Ivorian youth while also conveying political messages. She founded the Les Sisters du Zouglou band in Abidjan in 2024. ÉPIQUE ! (POUR YIKAKOU) marks her first collaboration with Nadia Beugré.

As one of only very few women in Burkina Faso, Salimata Diabate secretly learned to play the balafon by watching her father, thus defying his word – because girls were not allowed to play this instrument. She founded her group Afro Faso Jeunesse in Ouagadougou, accompanying artists such as Fatou Sacko, Irène Tassembedo, Eudoxie Gnoula and Sidiki Yougbaré on international stages. She currently lives in Montpellier, teaching and composing her own music. ÉPIQUE ! (POUR YIKAKOU) marks her first collaboration with Nadia Beugré.

Actor and dramaturge Kader Lassina Touré studied at the Compagnie Nationale de Théâtre et de Danse as well as at the Conservatoire National Supérieur d'Art Dramatique (CNSAD) in Paris. In Europe, he performed at the Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne, at MC93 in Bobigny with NKENGUEGI by Dieudonné Niangouna as well as at the Théâtre National de la Colline in Alexandra Badea’s POINTS DE NON-RETOUR trilogy as well as elsewhere. He regularly supports directors with the documentation of social topics on the African continent.

Jean-Christophe Lanquetin is an artist, stage designer for live performances and exhibitions as well as a lecturer at Strasbourg’s Haute école des arts du Rhin (HEAR). Together with François Duconseille, he is the driving force behind Scénos Urbaines – Global Artist Residencies. Following PROPHÉTIQUE (ON EST DÉJÀ NÉ.ES), this marks the second collaboration with Nadia Beugré.