For the past years, Nadia Beugré has been reaching out to the transgender community in Abidjan.

Assigned as boys, they are navigating between genders with a fierce freedom in a very patriarchal society that, at best, pretends not to see them.

Hairdressers by day, dancefloor divas by night, they live both exposed and underground, flowing from parallel circuits to solidarity networks and invent their own dances which, mixing voguing and coupé/décalé, make the nights of Abidjan...

For Abidjan’s people, they are the "crazy" ones, the "sissies", conveniently forgetting that their own wives, their own daughters are being braided each month in their salons.

Following Legacy and L'homme rare, Nadia Beugré pursues her research on gender and identity, but also on those she calls the "stranded", the misfits, those from the margins, from the periphery, those who are rejected or ignored. She keeps interrogating assignations and roles in the family, in the society, in history, the roles you are given and those you take...

"A few years ago, a woman came to see 10 000 Gestes by Boris Charmatz, a piece in which I dance in a G-string and bra, and she asks me after the show why I chose this 'role'. Why was she asking me this question, me out of the twenty or so other performers on stage, and what “role” was she talking about? I realised that I’m missing something in the way people see me here in Europe. I realized how much people's perception often locks you into boxes, as a black woman on a European stage for example, boxes over which you have no control...

So what interests me in 'les folles' as people called them, ignoring of course the strength born out of madness and the incredible nerve it takes to find a way round the roles society imposes on all its members, from childhood to death.

In the huge market of Yopougon, a working-class district in Abidjan, everyone knows where they work. Fearless, they staged their own life, they invent their own places, they build their own world. If life is a ring, as used to say Béatrice Kombé, they are here to fight with incredible courage and creativity. In this respect, they fully belong to this young generation who, every day, in Abidjan as in the rest of the country, has to invent the means of its own survival.”

This piece was built on extensive periods of research and work in Abidjan, encountering members of the community, following them in their daily routine, sharing their stories.

The cast mixes non-professional performers with local dancers and two performers from Europe.

The process was followed by photographer David Kadoule (Togo), not to document the work but rather to create an independent artistic object testifying of the process while transforming it through an artistic lens.