KANIZADI
ANTONIO TAVARES / BOMBU MININO

Kanizadi rises as a 
sonic invocation, a call to
body and spirit.

Re_act Contemporary Art Laboratory and Residency Program in this season’s laboratory, that will took place from October 10 to October 27, had in residence António Tavares and Bambu Mininu developing her research - Kanizadi - in the Azores Islands.

Cape Verde and the Azores share Atlantic roots within the so-called Macaronesia — a constellation of “fortunate islands” now calling for new meanings. This project seeks to reimagine the term through art, community, and memory, envisioning a decolonised Macaronesian identity. Through collaborative practices, performances, and encounters, it celebrates diversity, resilience, and the living strength of island cultures that challenge colonial legacies and reclaim their own narratives.  The project Las brigs to the Islands Ari Tavares ari.you.ok bringing the sonic element to the project.

Bombu Mininu: Antônio Tavares, Ari Tavares, Miriam Tavares together with the researcher Andreas Silva and Rafael de Oliveira, lead us on a rhythmic journey where ancestral memory and present fire intertwine—between drums that speak and silences that dance. It is in the deep pulse of this concert that the living island ignites: a landscape of shimmering, fertile blackness, where sound is not just sound, but gestures, resistance, enchantment. Each beat is an offering. Each chord is an invitation to vagrancy as a practice of liberation—to step outside the body's axis, to err, to shake the hangers on which norms and molds hang. With eyes closed or wide open, the audience is summoned. Vagrancy is urgent.

ARTIST

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ANTONIO TAVARES

António Tavares, born in Mindelo, is internationally recognised as one of the leading figures in contemporary African dance. A dancer, musician, and cultural agitator, and Founder Of Bombu Mininu Mindelo’s Cultural Center, he began his career with the Mindel Stars group, touring internationally. Founder of the groups Crêtcheu and Compasso Pilon, he has worked with choreographers such as Olga Roriz and Aldara Bizarro and shared stages with artists including Pina Bausch and Bebe Miller. His work merges tradition and contemporaxneity, body and territory, standing as a living symbol of Afro-Lusophone creation in motion.