What the Body Carries: With Athena Lucie Assamba
Live on CIUT 89.5 FM
Airing Date: October 31, 2026
Host: Nicole Inica Hamilton
Production Editor: S-Quire Johnson
Executive Assistant: Aleshia LaCruise
Featured Guest(s): Athena Lucie Assamba
In partnership with Immersion Festival, through the lens of featured artists we explore what the body carries — inherited histories, embodied knowledges, the stories we hold. Tune in for this featured broadcast with guest Athena Lucie Assamba (African futurist, multidisciplinary artist-researcher, performer, and choreographer). This intimate Immersion Festival talk is co-curated by Nicole Inica Hamilton, and Timea Wharton-Suri. The inaugural Festival takes place Nov. 8-22, 2026 at Betty Oliphant Theatre in Toronto.
About Athena Lucie Assamba
Athena Lucie Assamba is an African futurist, multidisciplinary artist-researcher, and choreographer of Cameroonian origin. Rooted in African ancestral knowledge and heritage, her practice moves across dance, music, styling, and writing. She researches and engages with ancestral, urban, and club dance forms, including Bikutsi, Ndombolo, and Waacking, developing her artistic language through works such as NKUL NNAM, African Celestial Beings, BOSEMBO, and the research project Cabaret Essence. Her work explores the mysticism of African essence, movement as a vessel for transmitting inherited and untold knowledge, and imagination as a tool for reclaiming ancestral worldviews.
Holding a Bachelor’s degree in Neuroscience, she investigates the intersections of movement, therapy, and transformation. Informed by training in Canada, Senegal, Cameroon, and internationally, including at Nyata Nyata and École des Sables, her research centres on ancestral technologies, philosophies, transmission, and collective practices as pathways towards liberation.
Photo of Athena Lucie Assamba by David Wong