Bantu

At the origin of Bantu, there was an invitation addressed to Victor Hugo Pontes by Estúdios Victor Córdon and Camões - Portuguese Cultural Center in Maputo, to develop a new piece performed by Mozambican and Portuguese dancers.

Estúdios Victor Córdon and Camões – Portuguese Cultural Centre in Maputo have decided to develop a partnership for a joint programming over three seasons, which results from a desire to build bridges between the two countries and enable the mobility and internationalization of dance. Bantu is thus the result of this partnership, and is born with the goal of crossing cultures and bringing the two countries closer together, allowing the training, circulation and internationalization of the performers.

As for the program's title, Bantu refers to a family of languages spoken in sub-Saharan Africa. In Mozambique you can hear several Bantu languages; the predominant one is Macua. But Bantu means more than one linguistic occurrence. It can also be: a language of its own that survived the imposed European languages; an identity mechanism; a body system "spoken" by Africans; a sign that remained closed to the colonizer; a form of communication with its own cultural, historical, religious, and political codes; an ephemeral materialization of the longest encounter. Bantu, the title, takes in everything we want or imagine Bantu, the piece, to be. The world is perceived from the language we speak: perhaps this was more or less Pessoa's idea when he wrote the famous and misunderstood phrase about the Portuguese language. In Bantu, Victor Hugo Pontes will walk the path that leads to an encounter with a language that is probably even devoid of words. We know that when one speaks with the body, a universal language is used, and that this is the language of dance.

It happens that, from the different geographies we inhabit - in a country or on a stage - we have different perspectives of the same world, and so we can never speak the same language, or see the same things, or get to the same places. Bantu is a path to be traced. And the journey will be made across two continents, between two countries with complex affinities and deep memories of each other.

The meeting point will be a surprise.