Braids & Heritage
Jossua Satinée & Stacey Désilier
Inhabited bodies, diasporic legacies, and transmitted know-how converge in this jubilant piece, weaving connections between our collective imagination and the vitality of Afro-descendant heritages. Jossua Satinée and Stacey Désilier, incandescent, deliver a luminous work where precision of movement engages in dialogue with a deeply embodied intensity.

Carried by an almost cosmic adelphity, their collaboration becomes a matrix: a space where the intimate meets the collective, where memory circulates—alive, shifting. Together, they shape a space resolutely For Us and By Us*.
At its origin, a revelation acts as a catalyst: to explore the complexity of lineages and multiple identities. The piece does not narrate. It unravels the past and weaves, in the present, connections with the presences that move through it. From cakewalk to moonwalk, from twerk to hip-hop, from catwalk to square set, dances born from Afro-descendant resistance activate virtuosic bodies. Ancestral know-how intersects with contemporary, embodied trances, while playful and pop cultural references are diverted with sharp lucidity.
Beneath an apparent lightness, deeper layers emerge: buried histories, invisibilized memories, and cultural territories traversed and reclaimed. The piece probes these overlapping strata, shifts signs, and explores identities in their continuous transformation.
Satinée and Désilier anchor their practice in a fully embraced physical and aesthetic pursuit. Nourished by a deep complicity forged over years, their approach asserts a dehierarchized relationship to roles and knowledge. The stage becomes a workshop, a sanctuary, a site of friction, but also of homage and communion. Braids & Heritage celebrates metamorphosis as necessity: transforming in order to survive while remembering. Making fluidity a strategy. Connection, a political gesture.
* For Us and By Us refers to a creative space or state shaped from within—by and for the communities it represents—where stories, knowledge, and representations emerge through and for their own voice, grounded in self-determination, transmission, and reclamation.

credits
Concept, choreography, performance, set and costume design Jossua Satinée & Stacey Désilier Sound design Steven Doman Lighting design Paul Chambers Lighting and scenographic design assistance Jordana Natale Dramaturgy Angélique Willkie Technical direction Samuel Thériault Production Jossua Satinée & Stacey Désilier Delegated production Parbleux Co-production and presentation Festival TransAmériques – FTA (Montréal) Creative residencies Centre de création O Vertigo (Montréal), L’Annexe-A (Rouyn-Noranda), Circuit-Est Centre chorégraphique (Montréal) Supports Open studio Parbleux, SummerWorks Festival, Fall for Dance North Festival. The creation of this work is made possible through the financial support of the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec and the Conseil des arts de Montréal.
The premiere will be presented in June 2026 as part of the Festival TransAmériques (Montreal).



