Fusion

Fusion questions the relationship between the margins and the center, pays homage to neighbourhoods, to the extra-muros, to the creativity of the suburbs, of the underground, of hip-hop culture as an eternal flamboyant outsider. Fusion is a powerful tribute to victims of police violence. A dense, graceful, urgent creation. A complicity between two women – Joëlle Sambi and Hendrickx Ntela – who transcend their “Arts”, Slam and Krump, to create a common scenic language. Between the lucidity lurking in Joëlle’s words, delivering a text of engaged and enraged poetry on social and police violence, and the power of Hendrickx’s Krump, whose every movement exists to translate the verses, we are witnessing a real festival of emotions. A poem expressed by two different bodies, two different generations, two different arts.

Their meeting takes place on stage, during a tribute to Semira Adamu in 2018, 20 years after her assassination by the Belgian police. The desire to collaborate together is obvious and immediate. There’s something in common between these two artists, an inner strength, a power in the voice whether it is slammed for one or krumped for the other. We also feel a desire to pass it on to future generations, to highlight those set aside by our society.

Joëlle Sambi & Hendrickx Ntela are associate artists at the Théâtre National Wallonie-Bruxelles.