Be Prophetic

From the start of her career as a choreographer, Nadia Beugré has made an impact with her assertive stance, honesty, generous poetry, and bold vitality. Meeting Béatrice Kombé (Côte d’Ivoire), with whom she founded the company Tchétché, set her on her way. Following the loss of Kombé, Nadia attended the École des Sables in Senegal, then went to France to pursue her training in Montpellier. There, she launched her career as a dancer—notably collaborating with Alain Buffard, Seydou Boro, Dorothée Munyaneza, Boris Charmatz, and, more recently, Robyn Orlin—and choreographer. Since the resounding success of L’homme rare at FTA 2022, she has been spending more and more time in her hometown of Abidjan, where in addition to creating her two latest works, Filles-Pétroles and Prophétique (on est déjà né·es), she launched the Entr’Ailes training program for women artists, producers, and stage technicians.

Viewed as a rebel in her own country, Beugré likes to say that being a woman, artist, and lesbian in her society requires three times as much work. She does not seek to provoke but to inform by examining power and dominance relationships. Her energy and commitment are inspired in part by the historical struggle and courage of Ivorian women. Both sensual and political, each of her plays is a joyous raising of awareness. From Quartiers libres to Prophétique (on est déjà né·es), Beugré continues to tackle widespread hypocrisy and question contemporary slavery, offering a breath of hope and freedom in their place.

After studying theatre and dance in Brazil, Portugal, and France, she developed her own creative works, in which she practices gambiarra—a Brazilian term that means finding solutions to everyday problems using any means at hand—in pursuit of images of democracy by and for queer bodies. Her artistic universe juxtaposes vulnerability and confusion, dreams and nightmares, delicacy and obscenity.