Bambu 2026

BAMBU is a project that builds cultural relationships between Italy and Sub-Saharan Africa through a principle of concrete, reciprocal, and non-hierarchical collaboration. Rather than a showcase, it is a space of encounter between artists, programmers, and contexts, created to bring forward the vitality of the contemporary African scene and to generate lasting connections between practices, visions, and institutions. For its second edition, BAMBU presents three short solos by three female authors from the equatorial African region—Linda Sarki Johnson (Nigeria), Stéphanie Mwamba (Democratic Republic of the Congo), and Diana Odhiambo (Kenya)—who, from different perspectives, interrogate the social and symbolic universe of the feminine, creating tensions between tradition and cosmopolitanism, memory and transformation. Each evening is accompanied by a public talk moderated by Roberto Castello.

In MAHAKA, a solo choreographed and performed by Linda Sarki Johnson, the body becomes a site of emancipation and reinvention. The title, meaning “freedom” in the Irigwe language, announces a journey of liberation from the constraints of tradition towards new possibilities of movement, expression, and self-affirmation. Rooted in an improvisational practice deeply connected to African matrices of gesture and rhythm, the work transforms interference, distraction, and rupture of flow into creative material, giving rise to a dance that celebrates individuality as an act of resistance and self-discovery.

With KIZAZI, Stéphanie Mwamba constructs a dance of memory, transmission, and metamorphosis, in which Congolese tradition enters into dialogue with contemporary choreographic practices. The body here becomes a living archive, traversed by ancestral traces, life cycles, buried emotions, and female genealogies. It is an intimate and ritual work that looks at the womb as a site of memory and creative matrix, and at dance as a tool for reconnecting with an originary, organic, and telluric force.

In THIN LINE, Diana Odhiambo draws on her own experience as one of the very few contemporary dancers active in Kisumu, Kenya, to shape a work that is both personal and political. Through the interplay of movement, text, music, and voice, the solo brings to light the often-silenced stories of African mothers and the struggles that continue to resonate in the bodies of their daughters, seeking a fragile yet necessary balance between decolonisation and cultural preservation, between individual wound and collective memory.

Linda Sarki Johnson (1998), known by her stage name Eskapee, is a Nigerian dancer and performer from Jos, Plateau State, known for her versatility, strong stage presence, emotional depth, and ability to adapt to diverse creative environments, giving life to authentic and innovative performances deeply rooted in African culture. She graduated from QSchool, one of the departments of the QDance Center, an outstanding cultural project founded in 2014 in the center of Lagos for the training of dancers, musicians, media artists, and organizers. She is currently a dancer with the QDance Company. She is also strongly committed to the education of new generations and has founded the Eskapee Kiddies Dance Academy in Jos, where she teaches children not only dance techniques but also essential values such as discipline and self-confidence.

STÉPHANIE MWAMBA
Stéphanie Mwamba (1997) is a choreographer, performer, actress, and journalist born in Goma, Democratic Republic of the Congo. After training in contemporary and traditional dance at the Foyer Culturel de Goma, she worked as a soloist with her company Ochula Cie. As a performer, she took part in the revival of Pina Bausch’s The Rite of Spring. In 2019 she founded the Ochula Center, a space dedicated to training, research, and the teaching of traditional and contemporary dance, located in Minova, Democratic Republic of the Congo. The center promotes artistic exchange and hosts residencies, contributing to the development of the local choreographic scene. Her childhood was marked by the fragmentation of the country due to numerous rebellions that separated her from her roots in Kasai, central Congo. Dance and cultural identity thus became the original link to those lost roots and the pillars of an artistic approach grounded in traditional dances, which she continuously places in dialogue with contemporary dance techniques.

DIANA ODHIAMBO
Diana Odhiambo (1993) lives in Kisumu, Kenya, and regularly collaborates on interdisciplinary pan-African projects. In 2024 she graduated in African contemporary dance from École des Sables in Senegal, further developing her choreographic language and artistic vision. Through Thin Line, she asserts the visibility and power of African female voices in dance and society.

With the contribution of

Main media Partner

With the support of

Linda Sarki Johnson Stéphanie Mwamba Diana Odhiambo

With the contribution of

Main media Partner

With the support of

Linda Sarki Johnson
Stéphanie Mwamba
Diana Odhiambo