Pak Ndjamena: “to have enlarged my artistic axis and its professionalisation”

ANT Tales is a series in which we catch up with past ANT Mobility Fund recipients to find out how this support impacted their work and professional pathway.

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Mozambican contemporary dancer and choreographer Bernardo Guiamba, who performs under the moniker Pak Ndjamena, received ANT Mobility funding in 2020 to develop his work ‘DEUS NOS ACUDI’ [God Supports Us) via remote collaboration with the Unmute Dance Company in Cape Town.

Having received the ANT Mobility Fund to develop my project was incredibly valuable to my artistic career and expanded the relevance of the project. This resulted in new partnerships and opportunities and being offered several international contracts to show the work, including Afrovibes Performance Arts Festival, Amsterdam, and Lalanbik in Reunion Island, among others. The project has been shown in virtual platforms such as the Inclusive Arts Festival and the National Arts Festival, South Africa as well as eco-performance festivals Vivadanca Festival Internacional and Pretaforma Festival in Brazil. Having had the opportunity to reconfigure the project from stage performance to audio visual, awakened in me the interest in developing more dance and audio visual projects responding to new niche formats in the arts market created by the COVID-19 pandemic. I feel grateful to have enlarged my artistic axis and its professionalisation, thanks to the ANT Mobility Fund.