Dancing into the night - Prophétique (on est déjà né-es) by Nadia Beugré splashes off the stage.

Sometimes the run-in to a performance is so pleasant that you hope everyone will continue to drone on for a bit. Make it last longer! It feels like you're at a rehearsal, or a private party, at a private event, where you can peek in. This is certainly true of Prophétique (on est déjà né-es) by Nadia Beugré, which is set in a setting unfamiliar to me: nightlife in the Ivory Coast.

The performers wobble dancing on a chair, jumping up to twerk, twirling to warm up. Duckwalks, floor work, dips and other vogue elements pass by while the MC jazzes things up, aided by rousing African rhythms. Coupé-décalé reports the programme description: a kind of soukous, but faster: lots of percussion, a deep bass and a mc who sets a positive mood in rap French. The energy level is extremely high and spills over to the audience, which cannot sit still in the hall filled to the stairs. This promises to be a tasty evening. But how can a performance develop when the energy seems to be right as at its peak?

Flirting with the audience

There is something intimate about the atmosphere, perhaps because the sound is overdriven, or the chairs on stage are not fancy, but white plastic garden furniture. It is precisely this ordinariness that is beautiful; you feel the sultry, warm night, in which the nightclub is both the place to watch and be watched, and the place to hide. Don't expect neat theatre, the performance says at the start. And we don't get that either. What we do get is a disarming, passionate and committed piece about trans women in the Ivory Coast. During the day they make other people beautiful, at night it is their turn to shine.

And shine they do, with wigs, glitter dresses, thongs and make-up. And with rousing, flirtatious, evocative dance. The dancers (for convenience, I use the gender-neutral male form) flirt with the audience: clap for us! Joel for us! Love us! But a monologue in Portuguese (Portugal, too, colonised Côte d'Ivoire) announces that it's not all bling and glitter: "If I wear a wig, is that feminine enough? What should I do, what should I wear, how should I talk to be able to walk around the streets without risking being insulted, pointed at, threatened, beaten..."

Safe haven for queer community?

Homosexuality has never been criminalised in Côte d'Ivoire, as long as it is not public. A legacy of French rule, unlike British rule, in which it was criminalised. That does not mean it is a Valhalla for the LGBTQIA community. Research from 2018 showed that over three quarters of the country would not accept gay neighbours. There is no reason to believe that things have improved much in five years.

A community of their own, with safe spaces, is therefore essential. And in the hair salons of Yopougon, dancer and choreographer Nadia Beugré came across just that: the place where the trans, gay and queer community can be itself, radically quirky and independent. This is where she got her inspiration for Prophétique (on est déjà né-es).

Practice what you preach: Beugré gives opportunities to women

Beugré grew up in Abidjan, in Ivory Coast, and began her professional dance career in 1995. She was one of the founders of the all-female company TchéTché, which combined traditional African dance with contemporary experimental dance. After training in Senegal, she settled in Montpellier, France.

Since 2017, she has had her own company and production house Libr'arts in both Montpellier and Abidjan , where she makes works, and mainly educates young women in dance, other performing arts but also technical and administrative disciplines. Giving women, all women, including trans women, in Côte d'Ivoire opportunities to develop visibility and a voice is one of her missions.

This is also reflected in her performances: she explores gender roles, identities and patriarchy.

And that is also where the strength of Prophétique (on est déjà né-es) lies. The dancers are part Ivorian, part European, part professional, part not. What they all are is driven to show that the folles, the fools, the unpatriotic, have a right to exist. And that they have a community that is strong.

That sense of community is most strongly expressed in a scene in which they all, wearing wigs of long braids, catch on like a kennel of barking dogs. First they bark at each other, sniffing each other, groping. The hierarchy has to be determined, who is the dominant barker? Then it's our turn. They form a line facing the audience. We get barked at. They eat us raw.

Ranny sweets

Another moment when the audience is involved in the performance is when we are thrown sweets. This doesn't just happen, first the sweets have to reach the dancers: partly they fall from the sky, and partly, well, from the buttock crack of one of the dancers. Luckily, we don't get these at our heads. The sweets that do reach us are accompanied by wishes. My candy fell between me and the neighbour, but the wish that I could get more rest is welcome.

Balance is not always Prophétique's strongest ingredient. Nor is subtlety. Some elements take too long. Is that a bad thing? No. This performance doesn't need the perfect pliés and tight timing. Here it is about what it has to say. "Get used to it now. For we are here and not leaving. On est déjà né-es!" ( we are already born). During the applause, the last dips done, the spectacular one-legged backward fall. Vogueing has always been the language of the Black queer community, let that be clear.

Bouncing slightly, we are back on the street. We walk down Rue Goffart in the Brussels neighbourhood of Ixelles. The neighbourhood's African influences are obvious from the restaurants and the groups of men on the street. Suddenly, tufts of hair for extensions catch my eye. Prophétique doesn't let go of me. What would these men be doing tonight?