Sawata – Nadéeya GK
SAWATA encapsulates the very essence of the piece. Sawa refers to the Sawa people, a Bantu community from the Cameroonian coast to which the choreographer belongs, also known as the People of the Water. Wata, in Cameroonian Pidgin, means “water.”
Born from a double personal loss—the passing of her adoptive father and later her mentor—SAWATA unfolds as a rite of passage, a journey in which grief becomes movement and movement becomes living memory. For this creation, Nadéeya GK (Nadia Gabrieli Kalati) draws inspiration from the Ngondo, an ancestral ceremony of the Sawa people during which an initiate dives into the depths of the water to commune with the ancestors and return bearing a message. In SAWATA, this dive becomes an inward one.
At the crossroads of house dance, Pan-African dance traditions and her training at the École des Sables, Nadéeya GK develops a deeply embodied choreographic language in which the body once again becomes a living archive, a space of memory and a site of transformation.
Driven by a visceral physicality, the piece summons buried memories, moves through silence, enters into dialogue with the unseen and transforms loss into a vital force. The voices of the women in her lineage, interwoven with Adrien Kanter’s sonic world and musical compositions bridging Cameroon and Senegal, create a sensory landscape where the intimate meets the collective, turning the personal into a universal experience.
SAWATA is an invocation. A descent. A crossing. A transformed return.
Choreography and performance: Nadia Gabrieli Kalati “Nadéeya GK” · Lighting design: Xavier Lescat · Sound creation and arrangements: Adrien Kanter · Composers: Cheikh Ibrahim “Chico” Thiam, Rass Nganmo, Adrien Kanter · Voice-over: Women of the Mbella family, Sharleen Eyoum, Nadéeya Gabrieli Kalati · Costumes: Caroline Fainke · Outside eyes: Wanjiru Kamuyu and Alesandra Seutin · Production manager: InHop
Production: PARADOX-SAL MOUVEMENT and cie. aKôT · Coproduction: Initiatives d’Artistes en Danses Urbaines (Fondation de France – La Villette) · FAIR-E / CCN de Rennes et de Bretagne – studio residency (DRAC Bretagne) · La Place – Centre Culturel Hip Hop · Département de Seine-Saint-Denis. With the support of École des Sables (Senegal).
BUY YOUR TICKET
/ SORTIR ! rate on sale on the Destination Rennes website /