Through-physical dance experience

The rhythm knocks. On doors, in the chest, through the floor.
It speaks before we have words, it moves us before we understand.

With Knocking, Horácio Macuacua lets the rhythm become body: a language of muscles, sweat and breath. It is both gravity and liberation, weight and play.

Norrdans’ ensemble is thrown into this stream, sustained by its inexorable power, falling, rising, breathing at the same pace. Here rhythm becomes a universal alphabet. It merges us into one body, one room, one now. Rhythm is not just a simple accompaniment, but as a language of its own. Rhythm is always there. It is in the music, in the footsteps, in the room, in the breath. Rhythm is a feeling.

Expect a thoroughly physical dance experience that keeps you leaning forward in the auditorium.

About the choreographer

Mozambican dancer and choreographer Horácio Macuacua is the artistic director of the dance company that bears his name. Macuacua develops projects that aim to go beyond established forms. With an open mind and a readiness to capture the moment, movement is immediately transformed into compositions that are complex and elaborate, with both depth and playfulness, darkness and light. Each composition is a journey to reshape and reinvent within the framework of meaning-making.

He has completed projects such as COMUM, Orobroy, Stop! (first prize at the Danse l’Afrique Danse Festival 2010), Smile If You Can!, Fighting Room, Convoy, Paradise is not in the sky!, Theka, Mugangueni, I am tired, Here’s to Life.

Macuacua has collaborated with choreographers such as Cristina Moura, Thomas Hauert, Pablo Colbert, George Khumalo, Wim Vandekeybus/Última Vez and David Zambrano, whom he considers his mentor.

He has held classes and workshops in France, Germany, Belgium, Spain, the Netherlands, Cyprus, the United States, South Korea, Brazil, South Africa and Mozambique.

About the composer

Nandele Manguni is one of the most innovative beat makers, producers, and DJs from Mozambique. He is at the forefront of the alternative and experimental music scene, with a style that blends bass-driven boombap instrumentals, ambient, techno, EBM, dubstep, trap, psychedelic hip-hop, and the makonde rhythms that originated in northern Mozambique.

He is the son of the first black director of Mozambique’s national radio after the country’s independence – a background that gave him access to a rich musical universe early on. As a child, he listened to everything from Michael Jackson to Fela Kuti, from Kanda Bongo Man to Santana and Marvin Gaye – influences that today characterize his beat productions.

Nandele is a prolific producer and songwriter who has composed music for contemporary dance performances and films.