Born in Ivory Coast, Nadia Beugré made her first appearance in 1995 as a member of the Dante Theatre. Two years later, she became a founding member of Béatrice Kombé’s ground-breaking, all-female dance ensemble, TchéTché, with whom she toured for years to critical acclaim across Africa, Europe, and North America.
Through Beatrice Kombé, an immensely free woman, Nadia Beugré understands that the stage is a ring where anything can happen…
After Kombé’s death, she follows a training at Germaine Acogny’s Ecole des Sables in Senegal, and then joined in 2009 ex.e.r.ce., Mathilde Monnier’s programme for talented, up-and-coming choreographers at the Centre Chorégraphique National de Montpellier.
She was soon staging productions of her own, including the still-touring solo Quartiers libres (‘Free rein’) in 2012. Followed Legacy premiered at the La Bâtie Festival in Geneva in 2015 and also performed at the Festival d’Automne in Paris, Tapis Rouge (2017), and Roukasskass Club (2019). L’Homme rare, an all-male quintet performance, was premiered at the Montpellier Dance Festival in 2020. In 2023, the duet Filles-Pétroles and Prophétique (on est déjà né.es) with artists from the trans community, both created in Abidjan, bear witness to an Ivorian youth in fire… Her latest piece, Epique ! pour Yikakou is a journey towards the village of her father…
In Nadia Beugré’s journey, there is also another crucial encounter: Alain Buffard, with whom she performed Mauvais genre and Baron Samedi. “He pushed me to understand why I was relentlessly questioning the body, the sexuality, the gender. He was a gentle and generous man, an extraordinary listener, but he also shared his dark spaces with us. In the same way, I question this dark side in me, the darkness in the light that makes us so complex beings.”
For a decade, Nadia Beugre’s pieces have been developing a very singular journey around margins, exclusion, what is outside, abnormal, a journey through shifting identities, be they social, cultural, or gender-based…
Beugré also performs in works by fellow choreographers, such as Seydou Boro, Dorothée Munyaneza, Bernardo Montet, Rémy Héritier, Boris Charmatz, and in 2022 Robyn Orlin.
She was awarded in 2023 the SACD Prize New Choreographic Talent and was associate artist to ICI CCN de Montpellier (2023-2024).
With Virginie Dupray, Nadia Beugré has founded in 2020 her own dance company in Montpellier, Libr’Arts, a platform for production, touring, but also training, developing actions and programmes between France and Ivory Coast.