Frontera / Procesión – Un ritual de agua

Endangered Human Movements Vol. 4

WORKS

Frontera/ Procesion – Un ritual del Agua (Border / Procession- A ritual of Water) is the latest piece from the volume four of  Amanda Piñatas ongoing research Endangered Human Movements. The choreographic research of Volume 4 is rooted in a dance that emerged in the neighbourhood of El Ejido Veinte of Matamoros, Tamaulipas, at the border between Mexico and the United States. The history of this dance is related to the so called “Conquest Dances”, originally devised by the Spanish crown ( Casa Austria) 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 ( Colonial Difference) was exported to Latin America. In this staged dance battles Indigenous people where forced to personify the “Moors” and re stage their defeat, while the Spanish personify the Christian victors. The dance evolved through time and became a form of resistance or “re conquista”, in modern /colonial and, later, neoliberal contexts. Today is danced in a context of violence related to the liminal space of a border, where drug trafficking, militarisation, and cheap labor industries meet. A border choreography in which hip hop culture, colonial narratives, indigenous practices and spirituality intertwine.

Upon a commission from Short Theatre Rome Amanda Piña and her collaborators, Rodrigo de la Torre and Jorge Luis Cruz Carrera from Matamoros Mexico, and a group of 5 dancers living in Europe,  work together  on a week workshop with women* of diverse associations in the city. Feminist organizations related to the care for women, queer and trans people in situations of vulnerability, associations that welcome and orient people in situations of migration and other artistic and cultural hubs join forces and are connected by this process of transmission.  The  resulting public performance, is an act of solidarity with and between women * from diverse backgrounds, young and old, born in the city and elsewhere that meet in a ritual action relating to the sources of water of the city. The border is not only a place but is  inscribed in the bodies that become visible by taking the public space of the city. A ritual of water  that envisions a feminist political order, through which the future is cared and repaired. The waters from the city and in our bodies 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 the re appearance of ancestral forms of movement. 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.