Mozambique: Pak Ndjamena goes live in Maputo with ‘Deus nos Acudi’

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Mozambique: Pak Ndjamena goes live in Maputo with ‘Deus nos Acudi’

4:06 CAT | 03 Aug 2022

Image: MozLife

Mozambican choreographer and dancer Pak Ndjamena will, tomorrow, for the first time present the live performance of his ‘Deus Nos Acudi’ (‘God Help Us’) project in Mozambique.’Deus nos Acudi’ begins at 7:00 p.m. this Thursday (August 4) at the Franco-Mozambican Cultural Centre in Maputo.

In contemporary dance performance, Pak Ndjamena evokes his African ancestry and beyond, marked by orality, symbols, manuscripts, sacred objects and body movements.

His work questions issues such as racial difference that gives power and marginalises, creating “moments when everything is black and we do not see with our eyes; we feel life in a deep dream of anguish and pain, but when we wake up we find ourselves in chaos and we are just a body in the world, bringing in all this experience, even if unconscious”, a text by the curators reads.

Bernardo “Pak Ndjamena” Guiamba

Bernardo Guiamba, who goes by the artist name Pak Ndjamena, began his career as a dancer in the Escola Nacional de Dança. He is strongly influenced by the traditional dances of groups Tsemba and Ussoforal.

Since 1996, he has participated as a performer and choreographer in numerous festivals and projects in Mozambique, and other African and European countries. As a dancer, he has worked with Augusto Cuvilas, Culturarte and O Rumo do Fumo.

His projects include ‘De Porto em Porto’ in 2015 in Portugal, and during the Cape Town Art Week 2016, he was part of the live architecture project ‘Influx’ with visual artist Gerald Machona.

In 2017, he performed the pieces ‘Dentro Mim Uma Ilha’ by Panaiba Canda and ‘Influx’ at the KINANI Festival and Pak collaborated on the 2M project as a choreographer and interpreter (Mozambique and Madagascar), with the dancer Judith Olivia for the KINANI Festival in 2019.

Pak also creates video performance works, and teaches contemporary dance to amateurs and semi-professional dancers.

Pak Ndjamena Ndjamena and Ivan Barros (Mozambique) present the World Premiere of One Step at a Time in our African Digital Voices Platform – online on our Youtube Channel – Jomba_Dance.
📆 Monday 5 September
⏱7pm pic.twitter.com/HpcekWfW8d

— JOMBA! Contemporary Dance Experience (@Jomba_Dance) August 3, 2022

Pak Ndjamena is a multifaceted artist – a dancer, choreographer, cultural promoter, musician and actor. He does not consider himself belonging to a geographical territory dissociated from art. While proud of his African roots, he considers himself a world citizen and views art as a common language that enables communication.

Pak has choreographed and performed more than 20 pieces, and was the winner in the dance category of the 2019 Mozal Arts & Culture Award in Maputo, Mozambique.