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.
Program 2026:
19:00h Performance D
19:50h Post-show talk Performance D
20:00h Break
20:15h Humming-Bird / Colibri
21:00h Post-show talk Humming-Bird / Colibri
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 sweet discount. Buy a combiticket for only €25,- and see both the performances of Humming-Bird / Colibri and Performance D!
The performance I want revenge, grandma has been cancelled and will be replaced by Performance D. Bought a (combi)ticket for I want revenge, grandma? Keep a close eye on your inbox. Ticket holders will soon receive an email with further information regarding their tickets.
Two bodies meet in a physical dialogue on shared and sometimes contested ground, searching for ways to relate to one another.
What happens when two bodies must share the same space? Choreographer and dancer Fatou Cissé explores how people relate to one another on shared, and sometimes contested, ground. Through her expressive body language, Cissé makes palpable how living together requires attunement, friction, and surrender. Performance D is simultaneously confrontational and vulnerable: a performance about the complex dynamics of coexistence. It is a physical dialogue between two dancers in which attraction and resistance, vulnerability and power, are constantly shifting.
Who claims the space? Who sets the rules? Where does connection emerge? On stage, the space between the dancers becomes a site of tension and negotiation.
Duration: 50 minutes
