Frontera / Procesión – Un ritual de agua

Endangered Human Movements Vol. 4

Performance

Frontera/ Procesion – Un ritual del Agua (Border / Procession- A ritual of Water) is the latest piece by Amanda Piña/ nadaproductions, upon a commission from Short theatre Rome. The choreographic research of EHM*.Volume 4 has its roots in a dance that emerged from the neighbourhood of El Ejido Veinte of Matamoros, Tamaulipas, at the border between Mexico and the United States, danced today in a context of violence related to the liminal space of a border, where drug trafficking, militarisation, and cheap labor industries meet. The history of this dance is related to the so called “Conquest Dances”, originally devised by the Spanish crown to depict the Christian victory over the Moors in the Iberian Peninsula. During the colonization it was used as a racist propaganda tool, by which the difference between white and non-white was exported to Latin America. Indigenous people where forced to personify the “Moor” and re stage their defeat, while the Christian represented the victory of Spain. The dance evolved through time and became a form of resistance or “re conquista”, in modern /colonial and, later, neoliberal contexts.

Commissioned by Short Theatre Amanda Piña and her collaborators work  on a week workshop with women of diverse associations in Rome that work with welcoming and orienting new Italians coming from sub Saharan contexts, but also with feminist associations and organisations related to care of women in situations of vulnerability. The performance, oriented to strengthen solidarity with and between women in diverse situations of vulnerability, young and old, born in Italy and elsewhere, explore a border choreography in which hip-hop culture, colonial narratives, indigenous practices and mysticism intertwine, Amanda Piña reminds us that the border is not only a place but is also inscribed in the bodies.  This new ritual of water envisions a feminist political order, through which the future is cared and repaired. Water in our bodies and environments establish the path for new forms of solidarity, flowing through and beyond all notions of borders be they cultural, national or aesthetic.

 

* Endangered Human Movements is the title of a long-term project, started in the year 2014, focusing on human movement practices, which have been cultivated for centuries all over the world. Inside this frame a series of performances, workshops, installations, publications and a comprehensive online archive are developed which reconstruct, re-contextualize and re signify human movement practices in danger of disappearing, aiming at unleashing their future potential.