Dance in the human body, and relating to the sacred: With Zab Maboungou
Live on CIUT 89.5 FM
Airing Date: July 19, 2025
Host: Nicole Inica Hamilton
Presented by: The AMANI Project
Featured Guest(s): Zab Maboungou
On this episode, Turn Out Radio has partnered with The AMANI Project to air an interview from their library with featured guest and artistic director of Nyata-Nyata, Zab Maboungou Tune in as Maboungou sits down with Nicole Inica Hamilton to share thoughts about dance in the human body, relating to the sacred, and the dance technique, LOKETO.
About Zab Maboungou:
Of French and Congolese origin, Zab Maboungou is the artistic director of Zab Maboungou/Compagnie Danse Nyata Nyata, a contemporary dance company founded in 1987, based in Montreal, Quebec, whose artistic vocation encompasses creation, research, and teaching. LOKETO, her dance technique, has become a model of its kind, and many disciplines are finding a source of inspiration in this particular method including song, music, theatre, and visual arts. Drawing on the rhythmic foundations of African dances and musical forms, this technique makes it possible to identify the pathways of breath and establish how it ensures their transmutation in principles of movement to develop presence in space, flexibility, physical, and rhythmic endurance.
“Choreographer and performer, philosopher and writer, Zab Maboungou is an artist whose works of great introspective power and committed body language, strike our spirits: a vibrant sound space and articulated bodies interpenetrating in the sobriety and brilliance of an art of dance of ‘something from nothing at a high level.’” Deborah Meyers, Vancouver
Awards recently received by Zab Maboungou include: Compagne de l’Ordre des arts et des lettres du Québec (2019), Dancer or Dance Company of the Year award at the Gala Dynastie, presented by Regroupement Québécois de la Danse (2020), and the Canada Governor General’s Performing Arts Lifetime Artistic Achievement Award (2021).
About The AMANI Project:
The AMANI Project shares intergenerational wisdom among African Diasporic artists and educators while creating an enduring archive of their contributions to the cultural fabric of the world. AMANI (Artist Mentorship and Networking Interplay) is created and managed by Right Path World Arts Director Kai ner Maa Pitanta and Timea Wharton-Suri, and is supported by the Canada Council for the Arts and the Department of Canadian Heritage.
Among their programming which includes panel discussions, and a commemorative magazine, The Amani Project captures key insights from Canadian pioneers in the arts and education via moderated interviews which explore their journey, valued principles in their work, overcoming, and words of wisdom for current, and future generations.
