Panaibra Gabriel Canda

The founder of Mozambique’s first contemporary dance company, Panaibra Gabriel Canda is one of the artists working towards developing autonomous choreographic creation in Africa. With his very beautiful Time and Spaces: The Marrabenta Solos, he presents a show that deconstructs cultural representations of a »pure« African body. Since snatching independence from Portugal in 1975, Mozambique has been a land of social and political rifts which have seen an inflexible communist model gradually make way for a fragile democracy. This complex history is carried in the marrabenta, a musical form born in the 1950s from a mix of local and European influences. Accompanied by a guitarist, Panaibra Gabriel Canda dances and speaks about today’s African body: a post-colonial, plural body that has absorbed the ideals of nationalism, modernity, socialism and freedom of expression. His own body…