Afrovibes is an annual festival featuring dance, theater, and music performances by artists from Africa and the African diaspora. They address current issues relevant both there and here, offering a distinctive perspective on them.
Featuring contemporary dance and theater from West Africa, the Afrovibes Festival celebrates its 23rd edition from October 1 to 4. Under the theme "Soil / Soul," the festival explores the connection between land, soul, and cultural heritage. Artists such as Nadia Beugré, Florent Mahoukou, and Abdoulaye Konaté present powerful, personal performances that link current social issues with contemporary African perspectives. With performances in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and Utrecht, Afrovibes showcases the artistic richness, urgency, and innovative spirit of a modern Africa.
In a world where land is increasingly a site of conflict, power struggles, and extraction, the creators behind Afrovibes present alternative perspectives on land: as a place of memory, spirituality, and connection. In many African worldviews, land is inextricably linked to identity, ancestors, and community—a place where stories, rituals, and generations converge.
What does it mean to remain connected to one’s origins? What happens when people are severed from their land, history, or community? And how do memories live on within the body, in rituals, and in collective narratives?
Through dance, theater, music, and storytelling, Afrovibes brings together personal and collective stories of heritage, loss, resilience, and restoration. The performances make the relationship between spirit and soil palpable—intimate, urgent, and deeply human.
This poetic solo is an ode to life in all its forms and an invitation to look at the world around us with greater attention, wonder and care.
For choreographer and dancer Abdoulaye Trésor Konaté, the hummingbird symbolises resilience, responsibility and care for the living world. In Humming-Bird / Colibri, he transforms this inspiration into an intimate choreography shaped by gentleness, reflection and hope.
Inspired by the legend of the multicoloured hummingbird — a tiny bird that continues to face every obstacle despite its size — Konaté explores how individual actions can carry meaning in a world shaped by ecological and social change. The hummingbird becomes a metaphor for perseverance, care and the power of small gestures.
Duration 45 min.
Get yourself a discount. Buy a combiticket for only €25,- and see both Humming-Bird / Colibri and I want revenge, grandma.
Set around a large mound of sand, the performance brings together personal stories, colonial history and collective memory in a compelling theatrical landscape.
Through four key ideas — restitution, reparations, return and revenge — Colleen explores how the colonial past continues to shape the present, asking: what follows centuries of colonial violence?
Although revenge forms an important point of departure, vengeance itself is not at the centre of the work. Instead, Colleen explores how intergenerational trauma is passed down and how colonial legacies become embedded in bodies and relationships. The ‘grandma’ of the title appears as a figure connected to ancestry, memory and Fitzgerald’s Kpelle roots.
In the final scene, the space transforms into a place of collective release. During a shared dance around the mound of earth, space opens for a symbolic reunion of body, spirit and soil.
Duration: 60 min.
