25 YEARS CREATING A DANCE
THAT SHOWS AND ASKS
MAKES THE SILENCE VIBRATE
AND ALLOWS RYTHMS TO SPEAK
DRAWN FROM THE MUSIC OF BODIES
TO REINSTATE THE INTIMATE
AND THE STRENGTH WITHIN

ZAB MABOUNGOU/COMPAGNIE DANSE NYATA NYATA is a unique contemporary dance company on the Montreal and Canada scenes. Its artistic director, a choreographer, thinker and renowned performer Zab Maboungou, has asserted her firm commitment to produce her choreographic works, throughout the world, on and off stage, to teach the techniques of African dance, to support dancer education, develop audiences and take an active part in the institutional renewal of policies concerning the arts field.

MISSION

Zab Maboungou/Compagnie Danse Nyata Nyata was founded due to a deep vocation for art, for creative works and their role in society. Together these two aspects make up the backbone of this arts organization, whose mission is to create choreographic and musical works, but also literary and didactic productions based on its commitment to develop the art of contemporary dance, not only in terms of creating and producing shows, but also encompassing the full range of artistic development activities (research, training and education, creation and production).

ARTISTIC CREATION

The choreographic, musical and dance works of Zab Maboungou/Compagnie Danse Nyata Nyata strive to elicit the poetic power that emanates from the art of movement, bodies and rhythms. This power is inseparable from the intelligence of body language, emerging from the art of movement, bodies and rhythms. In the company’s works, abstract forms vie with physical space crossed by multiple pathways, whose tracks reveal their sophisticated poly-rhythmic composition. The casts of the different pieces are chosen among a group of dancers and musicians from a range of training backgrounds and origins.

REPUTATION

Finally, in terms of global artistic development and art’s ability to root itself in diversity of knowledge and communities, Nyata Nyata is a model among its kind.

After 25 years of tireless work in creation and teaching, the Company has earned an enviable reputation both in Québec and abroad. The works of Zab Maboungou/Compagnie Danse Nyata Nyata are recognized for this strong and manifest alliance between the physical and intellectual levels, and even the spiritual one. This sets its creations apart. Inspired by artistic and cultural action inseparable from the choreographic works driving it, Zab Maboungou/Compagnie Danse Nyata Nyata’s entire organization and activities play a part in creating a hotbed of creation and renewal.

Its credo: Arts, knowledge and people; People, arts and knowledge.

“At a time when exotic cultures are often merely tagged on to Western works, Maboungou utilizes her sources with artistic integrity.”
- Victor Swoboda, The Gazette, May 22, 2010

“Maboungou reveals a body language never yet explored”
- Frédérique Doyon, Le Devoir, February 2003

“Zab Maboungou is one of the many talented African artists who have come to Canada in search of a new life and made outstanding contributions to Canadian culture.”
- Foreign Affairs Canada.