Crossbeats

Crossbeats is a transdisciplinary performance where music, dance and storytelling move across cultures, bodies and generations. At its heart is the Timbila, a Mozambican musical instrument and dance traditional practice, brought into dialogue with electronic sounds, contemporary movement and performative storytelling.

Rather than treating tradition as something fixed or distant, Crossbeats explores it as living material: something that can be shared, transformed and reimagined through encounter. Artists from Mozambique, Italy and the Netherlands build a common stage language through rhythm, gesture, voice and sound, creating a collective performance shaped by exchange rather than single cultural perspectives.

Inspired by Lina Bo Bardi’s vision of folk traditions as artistic synthesis, Crossbeats looks at heritage through a contemporary lens. The result is a powerful and hybrid performance that connects memory and experimentation, local identities and global imaginaries, inviting audiences to experience tradition not as the past, but as a source for new creative possibilities.

CROSSBEATS is the result of a collaborative effort between Italy, the Netherlands and Mozambique, currently under development by Forevergreen/Electropark (IT), Agape Mozambique (MZ), in collaboration with Amsterdam Fringe (NL), The Other Mezrab (NL), Teatro della Tosse (IT), Festival M’saho, Casa Provincial de Cultura de Inhambane and others. with the support of the Goethe-Institut and Expertise France, in partnership with Institut français, within the framework of the Africa–Europe Partnerships for Culture – Connect & Create programme funded by the European Union.