‘Dance Body Protest, Somatic practices against racism’, was written for Chakkars (Sandra Chatterjee & Sarah Bergh) in 2020.
Digitizing the Archive from 1994-2016 – Angela Guerreiro Productions (AGP)
Digitizing the Archive from 1994-2016 – Angela Guerreiro Productions (AGP), it is an attempt to recover analog memories of intensive creative dance productions. My main research focus was topics around embodiment, the bodymind connection („Project X“ and the collaboration with neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, 1999), political and social concerns, such as racial and gender prejudice. These collaborations were an inquiry around the body and of belonging.
One of these productions was „Permanent Prints“, premiered at Kampnagel Hamburg in 1999. It was a triptych, constituted of three different choreographic works „Duett“, „Antarctica” and „Caligula“, the piece „Duett“, was performed by myself and Cristina Moura and it started with us both on stage, sitting on a chair, looking at the audience, with an empty look, a self-written banner hanging above our heads with the written statement „We won’t move“.
One of the main concerns was to bring up themes for reflection such as multicultural identities (today I would have used the terminology ‚body of cultures‘ coined by Resmaa Menekem), gender, racism, including social political conflicts. „Duett“ was about two Black women, two dancers, one of them seven months pregnant, performing movement scores considered out of the conventional approach. „Duett“, dealt with social prejudices and clichés around the Black body.
Going through some of the reviews of my choreographic work it is interesting to analyze the terminology used to describe these two female Black bodies, “Both are dark-skinned, so their dance also calls into question the identity-creating potential of skin color.” What a review, ‘Potential of skin color’? The fact is that the discourse around race, ethnicity and colonialism in contemporary dance in Germany at that time did not have found its place to be discussed.
The above example is just one of many more, and I trust that my work is an important source for research around the role of the female Black body within the German contemporary dance scene.
To digitize there is: 139 Hi8 + Mini DV, 27 VHS, 5 Betacam, 1 DVCam und 39 CD-Rom, including photographs, texts, postcards, programs and reviews.
Gefördert durch die Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien im Programm NEUSTART KULTUR, Hilfsprogramm DIS-TANZEN des Dachverband Tanz Deutschland.
Funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media of the NEUSTART KULTUR program, aid program DIS-TANZEN of the Dachverband Tanz Deutschland.
‚Me and My White Skeleton‘
an installation by Angela Guerreiro
September 10th – 12th, 2021 | 12am – 22pm | Halle 6 – Studio 2 | Dachauer Straße 112d | 80636 München |
Free entrance.
‚Me and My White Skeleton‘ is a proposal towards the awareness of black bodies as such, not as the other or the otherness, not as the alienated body, not as the exotic, but as we are: BIPoC conquering bodily space and contour. An ongoing research that looks at racism, the continuously daily aggressions, colonialism, the racial contract, the cause of dangerous right wing parties in Europe. How is this affecting our corporeal state, our nervous system, our bones? This installation is an attempt to foster communication, attention and a deeper reflection about the awareness of becoming ourselves as such. This installation is an archive with interviews done with artists, journalists, activists, scholars, politicians, and friends with the urge to expose matters that make our heartbeats heavy. It also reveals the early presence of BIPoC in Europe, reminding us with pleasure of those who fought against slavery, alienation, oppression and violence – and this continues until today.
„I am not at all exaggerating: A white man addressing a Negro behaves exactly like an adult with a child and starts smirking, whispering, patronizing, cozening. It is not one white man I have watched, but hundreds; and I have not limited my investigation to any one class but, if I may claim an essentially objective position, I have made a point of observing such behavior in physicians, policemen, employers.“
In Franz Fanon, Black Skin White Masks, chapter 1: The Negro and Language, p.19.
Daily program includes ongoing videos with interviews done with friends, journalists, artists, activists, politicians and researchers; short live performances with Angela Guerreiro; online Zoom conversations with guests at 7pm; and Film Screenings at 9pm.
I invite you to bring time and curiosity.
EVENING PROGRAM
September 10th:
Online Zoom talks | 7pm | with Dr. Cristina Roldão (Professor); Dr. Robbie Aitken (Professor); Patrícia Martins Marcos (PH.d candidate); Dr. Vania Gala (Choreographer & Researcher).
Film screening | 9pm: Tia Ciata (2017) by Mariana Campos and Raquel Beatriz, duration ’26:31. The documentary approaches the black female protagonist from the point of view of the popular character Tia Ciata, a woman of utmost importance for the Brazilian history and culture, a reference in the construction of the national identity.
Memórias Coloniais: Lugares da Memória – parte 1/2 and 2/2 (2019), directed by Pedro Gancho and Sara Morais, script and interviews by Carla Fernandes, duration ’2:23. Culturgest invited Carla Fernandes to summon other voices for the cycle Colonial Memories: Adolfo Maria, Cristina Roldão, Manuel dos Santos, Sónia Vaz Borges talk about historical consciousness in the first part of “Places of Memory“. In parte 2/2, duration ’4:34. Interviewees talk about “What is the place of colonial memory in the public space?“.
September 11th:
Online Zoom talks | 7pm | with Dr. med. Amma-Yeboah (Psychologist); Dr. Jeff Bowersox (Professor); Kathrin Pollow (Activist); Waseem (Rapper).
Film screening | 9pm | Audre Lorde – The Berlin Years 1984 to 1992, by Dagmar Schultz (2012), duration ’79. The documentary conveys Audre Lorde’s contributions to the German discourse on racism, xenophobia, antisemitism, class oppression, and homophobia.
September 12th:
Online Zoom talks | 7pm | with Eliphas Nyamogo (Consultant in the online editorial department at the Goethe-Institut headquarters in Munich); Joana Gorjão Henriques (Journalist); Karina Theurer (Lawyer); Pasquale Virginie Rotter (Pedagogue, freelance speaker).
Film screening | 9pm: May Ayim: Hope In My Heart, by Maria Binder (2007), duration ’28. Co-produced by Dagmar Schultz. The film presents a portrait of May Ayim, Ghanaian-German poet, academic and political activist. In Berlin, a street which had the name of a colonialist was renamed in 2010 after May Ayim.
Vitoria – Black and Woman a documentary directed by Torgeir Wethal. Produced by Odin Teatret Film. Duration ’21. B/W 1978. The Peruvian dancer and choreographer, Victoria Santa Cruz, demonstrates her own work with her folklore ensemble, in an interview by Eugenio Barba.
| Please note: Evening program subject to change | Only for the film screenings on the 11th and 12th we ask for 5€ support.
COVID-19 hygiene rules will be followed. Please bring your FFP2 mask.
Stipendien für den Bereich Tanz
© all rights reserved Angela Guerreiro
Documentation
Photo documentation @Priscillia Grubo
PROJECT ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks to: Dr.Vania Gala (Choreographer & Researcher); Ana Clara Guerra Marques (Choreographer, Writer & Researcher); Thelma Buabeng (Actress); Camille Barton (Professor & Artist); Vania Doutel Vaz (Dancer & activist); Diana-Sandrine Kunis (Activist, African Diaspora 2. 0); Karamba Diaby (Member of the German Parliament); Sarah Bergh (Political and Cultural Education, Performance/Theatre, Empowerment and Anti-Racism); Karina Theurer (Director Institute for Legal Intervention-European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights e.V. – ECCHR); Dr. Cristina Roldão (Professor & Researcher); Dr. Robbie Aitken (Professor – Black Germany:The Making and Unmaking of a Diaspora Community, 1884-1960); Patrícia Martins Marcos (PH.d candidate-Portugal, Race and Memory: a Conversation, a Reckoning); Pedro Varela (PH.d candidate – The origins of the black movement in Portugal (1911-1933): a pan-africanist and anti-racist generation); Dr. Jeff Bowersox (Professor – Black Central Europe); Eliphas Nyamogo (Head of the online editorial office of the Goethe-Institut in Munich); Riccardo Marchi (Journalist); Philippa Herrmann (Filmmaker); Ricardo de Paula (Choreographer & Activist); Sandra Chattejee (Choreographer & Researcher); Arko Mukhaerjee (Musician); Mario Lopes (Choreographer & Activist) & Isabel Hölzl (Interview translator); Joacine Katar Moreira (Member of the Portuguese Parliament, black intersectional feminist & anti-racist activist); Leonor Faber-Jonker (Author & Artist); Pedro Coelho (Journalist); André Amálio e Tereza Havlíčková (Directors of the theater company Hotel Europa); Hendrik Lorenzen (radio play – “Deutsch Südwest”, BR); Lorenz Rollhäuser (radio play – “A Love of Black – My Colonial Inner Life, Revisited”, NDR); Jürgen Bieling (Billionpoints); Frauke Dorothea Dreyer (Graphic design | Die Nordseiten); Benno Heisel; Anna Konjetzky; Sophia Kreth d’Orey; Cecilia Amado; Christoph Wilms; Noah Guerreiro Lorenzen; Julia Wingeleit (Kulturreferat der Landeshauptstadt München-Veranstaltungstechnik); Jörn Besser and Fatima Dramé (Halle 6); Marius Visean (Light-design); Jonaide Khodabakhshi (Video and Sound).
This installation would not have been possible without the support of: Joana Gorjão Henriques (Books and Films “Racismo em Português – O lado esquecido do colonialismo” (2016) & “Racismo no País dos Brancos Costumes” (2018); Frederico Batista (Film director of “Racismo em Português – O lado esquecido do colonialismo” (2016) & “Racismo no País dos Brancos Costumes” (2018)); Dagmar Schultz (Audre Lorde – The Berlin Years 1984 to 1992 and May Ayim: Hope In My Heart); Leslie Podell (The Sojourner Truth Project); Mathilda Legitimus and Samuel Légitimus (Collective James Baldwin); Simone Dragone (Odin Teatret – Black and Woman; Odin Teatret); Mariana Campos e Raquel Beatriz (Tia Ciata); Carla Fernandes (Memórias Coloniais: Lugares da Memória – parte 1/2 und 2/2); Liliana Coutinho (Culturgest); Paula Gonçalves (Fundacão Mario Soares); Sima Luitpert (Keynote by Sima Luipert during Colonial Repercussions V – The Namibian Case); Dr. Johannes Odenthal (Akademie der Künste); Karina Theurer, M.A. (Director Institute for Legal Intervention – European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights e.V. (ECCHR); Prof. Dr. Jürgen Zimmerer (Historian); and SPIEGEL Live – The conversation – Der verdrängte deutsche Kolonialismus with historian Jürgen Zimmerer, DER SPIEGEL, 07.04.2021.
And the online conversations guests: Dr. Cristina Roldão, Dr. Robbie Aitken, Dr. Vania Gala, Patrícia Martins Marcos, Dr. med. Amma-Yeboah, Dr. Jeff Bowersox, Kathrin Pollow, Waseem, Eliphas Nyamogo, Joana Gorjão Henriques, Karina Theurer, and Pasquale Virginie Rotter.
I thank to all the books, videos and articles that have helped me on my research path.
Me and My White Skeleton
Research Process
reflections by Afro-Portuguese Angela Guerreiro
#Planned Premiere:
September 10th, 2021 | Halle 6, Munich | 12am – 11pm.
Me and My White Skeleton is a proposal towards the awareness of black bodies as such, not as the other or the otherness, not as an alienated body, but as a way to conquer bodily space and contour. This research is about racism, colonialism and the historical presence of Black bodies in Europe. Through a series of interviews to artists, scientists, journalists, researchers I attempt to foster communication, attention and a deeper reflection about ‘concepts’ created by White bodies from where power, opression and race supremacy as been evolved until today.
On her text about the decolonization of the body, Pasquale Virginie Rotter writes, „Gestures, contexts and experiences of violence of those (colonial-)racist representations of our bodies are inscribed in them – together with the experiences of violence experienced directly and directly on our own bodies. We find ourselves in every message about a Person of Color who experiences racist violence, in every fresco of a black person above the pharmacy, in every fundraising campaign with People of Color. Like a mirror appearing repeatedly, screaming and lying. Imitating learning processes in childhood and adolescence led to involuntary repetitions of these gestures. The conscious or intuitive decision to become and be exactly as the white eye sees us was often the only way to get through or survive. Often the connections to our own gestures, our own body sensations and our own images were lost and overwritten.“
’Die Dekolonisierung des Körpers’ by Pasquale Virginie Rotter. Südwind-Magazin. Translated for this text with www.DeepL.com/Translator.
For this research, I tried to have conversations with the German and Portugiese popular right-wing populist parties AFD and CHEGA but they never answered my emails. And meanwhile, I decided to exclude such elements of disgrace to be part of the installation – I do not need to have the presence of people that spread words of hate and violence. I saw the works by Mo Asumang (Roots Germania) and Deeyah Khan (White Right: Meeting The Enemy) and I deeply praise their courage. Along the way I realized that I would not have that same strength. My interview with Pedro Coelho gave me an insight about the rise of the extreme right movements in Portugal and a fear for us BIPoC, our children, our family – it still fills my eyes with tears, and I ask myself „When is this hate going to stop, there is still so much work to do.“
During the interview with Mario Lopes he shares that „we can never put our armor down. The moment we relax something happens“. Always hyper vigilant, always alert, so exhausting.
Angela Guerreiro, July 27th, 2021
Interviews screenshoots with: Camille Barton, Thelma Buabeng, Vania Doutel Vaz, Ana Clara Guerra Marques.
Stipendien für den Bereich Tanz
© all rights reserved Angela Guerreiro