tamUjUntU

Bringing together Brazilian and South African dancers, tamUjUntU marks the grand return of the Via Katlehong company to La Villette. Orchestrated by Paulo Azevedo, this new creation brings together with panache South African and Brazilian popular and urban dances, symbols of resistance.
For over thirty years, the South African dance company Via Katlehong has been promoting pantsula, a protest dance born during the apartheid era in the townships on the outskirts of Johannesburg. Today, it collaborates with guest choreographers and is open to new contemporary writing. For the first time, the company is forging links with Brazil by inviting choreographer Paulo Azevedo, a key figure in Brazilian urban culture whose committed work is inspired by the violence and social fractures of his country. By naming this creation tamUjUntU - a graphic and phonetic adaptation of the Brazilian expression "we are together" - the artist is asserting links of solidarity and friendship across borders and cultures, conveyed here through dance. At the crossroads of Brazilian and South African trajectories, the choreography becomes a living material, traversed by the pulsations of a shared diasporic memory. On stage, bodies reaffirm their power, their desire, and the profound joy of being together.