Wata

Artistic proposal

Wata
This title refers to Mami Wata, spirit of the water, sometimes described as a mermaid, half woman half fish, or a beautiful woman holding a snake found in the coastal regions of West and Central Africa. She is the mother (goddess) of the Waters, feared by fishermen, and symbolises both the nourishing sea and the destructive ocean. Mami Wata is sometimes seen as a metaphor for modern African conditions – having the knowledge of the world’s wealth and the desire for large-scale consumption, but lacking the actual wealth or access to that world wealth that would allow Africans to participate in the system.

She is the only African deity worshipped in a vast geographical area that brings together cultures and peoples as diverse as the Igbo of Nigeria, the Ewé of Benin, the Bamiléké of Cameroon and the Kongo. It symbolises supreme power (just as the goddess Durga in the Hindu pantheon symbolises shakti).

The dance is based on a series of movements reminiscent of those of the sea, with calm moments but also more eventful phases, like swells and waves, and even more explosive ones, like waves breaking on land…
All these movements are generated by Mami Wata’s moods.
With duets, lifts, scenes of ‘building’ spaces of solidarity, imagining that we need the other to move, to move forward… to tell others about ourselves, to rejoice together, to encourage dialogue with the other, to show and share the richness of our singularities.
There’s no shortage of opportunities to dance. We’ll be dancing here because it’s vital that we get closer, that we talk to each other, that we respect each other, that we build stories together.