
SOKA TIRA OSOA
by
COMPAGNIE BASINGA
(FRANCE)
September 4, 2025
Length: 45 minutes
Age: all
Tatiana-Mosio Bongonga is one of the world’s few female artists walking the high wire. Basinga's SOKA TIRA OSOA (literally "pulling the rope") takes its name from the traditional “tug of war,” a sport in which two teams pull on the opposite ends of a rope, each trying to drag the other team across a line drawn in the middle. But Basinga turns the experience into a collaboration between the artists and audience-participants. Tatiana-Mosio Bongonga performs her poetic, breathless, spectacular balancing act, accompanied by live musicians. "It takes many to be many." Tatiana-Mosio Bongonga will carry out her breathtaking crossing in the South Street Seaport’s historic waterfront district, a feat of balance and imbalance, aided by her audience and the pop-up band’s auditory “ground track.” Basinga’s artistic practices are inseparable from the artist’s social mandate: One of the world's rare women high-wire performers, Bongonga has been organizing collective adventure skywalk aerial performances without a harness for over a decade. Wherever Basinga performs, she enlists the help of up to sixty local volunteers to stabilize the complex structure supporting the tightrope and help create a ceremony grounded in circus arts that combines music, acrobatics, and mutual trust. Beyond the company’s performances, Basinga conducts cultural and artistic projects in various settings, from hospitals to prisons, offering workshops in tightrope walking, costume design, and photography to promote personal development.




Presenting: SOKA TIRA OSOA by Compagnie Basinga - Both spectacular and participatory, this show creates a space that brings people together to meet and support one another. Live music accompanies the performance, adding to Tatiana-Mosio Bongonga’s poetic and breathtaking balancing act on the high wire after audience members participate in preparing her equipment. SOKA TIRA OSOA was performed at Manhattan’s famous, picturesque South Street Seaport location and was featured at the Down To Earth Festival 2025. Interview starring Jan Naets and Tatiana-Mosio Bongonga.
Basinga is a company gathered around the art of high-wire walking. Through research, teaching, sharing and through the production of high-quality participative shows, Basinga seeks to develop, expand, transmit and communicate this art which, better than any other, illustrates how our greatness is based on our weaknesses and our ability to combine them.
Cie Basinga performs Soka Tira Osoa at Magicians Festival, Lublin, July 28, 2019.
Supported by Theatre & New Forms, a program of Villa Albertine and Albertine Foundation




