Tracing Dance from Addis Ababa to Nairobi and Hamburg | Work in progress at Goethe Institute Nairobi | 2008-09

Together with dancers from Addis Ababa, Nuria Mohammed and Nairobi, Adam Ley Lucas, the Hip Hop artist Johnny Lloyd, a musician from Hamburg, Sven kacirek and Angela Guerreiro, European choreographer with African roots, they go on search for the meaning of movement and rhythm under the sign of European and African culture and colonial legacies.

The Tracing Dance project was supported by the Goethe-Institute Nairobi and the Goethe-Institute Gebrekristos Desta Center Addis Ababa.

Tracing Dance from Addis Ababa to Nairobi and Hamburg | 2008 | Video by Angela Guerreiro

Video made for the performance ‘Tracing Dance’ at Goethe Institut Nairobi 2008. Filmed during the residency in Addis Abeba and Nairobi by Angela Guerreiro.

The Tracing Dance project was supported by the Goethe-Institute Nairobi and the Goethe-Institute Gebrekristos Desta Center Addis Ababa.

Video created by Josephin Böttger for the solo Memory Play | 2005

Memory Play | 2005 – Part 7

Memory Play | 2005 – Part 5

Memory Play | 2005 – Part 4

Memory Play | 2005 – Part 3

Memory Play | 2005 – Part 2

Memory Play | 2005 – Part 1

The Performance Memory Play – A pirated copy is an “imaginary” reflection by Angela Guerreiro about China’s 21st Century. The core of the performance is a collection of interview – to be heard during the performance as off-screen voices – in which the collective memory of the vast Far Eastern country is expressed.
Images of a Chinese woman blends old and new cultural practices and behaviors. On stage, Angela Guerreiro tries as to turn into a foreign body, in an act of “piracy”. The terms variable and fast, tradition and identity, old and new, are key in terms of the representation of the current state of China’s ‘future’ development.

Artistic direction and performance: Angela Guerreiro
Music: Sven Kacirek
Video: Josephin Böttger
Dramaturgy: Peter Pleyer

The Altar for three voices in a room | 2006

Interdisciplinary laboratory  “Move The Mount” | 2005 – part 2

Interdisciplinary laboratory for choreographers from Germany and Poland “Move The Mount” initiated by Büro Kopernikus, which took place in September 2005, in Jagniątków in the Krkonose Mountains.

Interdisciplinary laboratory  “Move The Mount” | 2005 – part 1

Interdisciplinary laboratory for choreographers from Germany and Poland “Move The Mount” initiated by Büro Kopernikus, which took place in September 2005 in Jagniątków in the Krkonose Mountains.

exposure n° 1 – Manufacturing Dance Festival – Triade Hamburg | 2001

exposure – evenings of solo performance – started with started with readings of an Anthology of solo performers from the 20th century, from the fields of dance, theater, performance art, music, poetry, visual art, cinema, tap dance, cabaret, etc.. Some of their interventions were a tool to address on gender, social and political issues. Mixed with her own personal stories the solo leaves a taste of confusion among audience: Are those staged stories coming from her real life?

exposure n° 1 was presented at the Festival Manufacturing Dance, Hamburg (2001), exposure n° 2 at the Festival Feuer & Flamme (2002); exposure n° 3 at  Tanzwochen Münster (2002); exposure n° 4 at Festival Eigenarten, Goldbekhaus Hamburg (2002); exposure n° 5 at Die Höge – Artist in Residence (2003), and Schloss Bröllin (2003).

Permanent Prints | 1999

Angela Guerreiro is in Permanent Prints in humoresque and light way playing with clichés and prejudices concerning how our bodies are inscribed in contemporary society. In a duet and two solos the dualities between body and mind, nature and culture, biology and discourse is being questioned through the dancing body. The four dancers are examining their particular heritage to conceive a critical image of how our bodies in different manners are defined by the environment. The choreography is through three different points of departure examining the concepts for creating and erasing ethnic and sexual identities. Identities that are in-excluded by conventionalized frameworks, and therefor has to be understood as a multiplicity, constantly changing. Permanent Prints is a full length dance piece in three parts that are turning the gaze inside out and opening our eyes to each and everybody’s differences, letting us be proud of them. (Mårten Spångberg)

‘We carry the weight and the pleasure of our origin, our education, our history as permanently present heritage around with us. Angela Guerreiro calls her impressive‚ three-part piece about being marked over time ‚Permanent Prints‘. Only few besides Angela Guerreiro succeed in exerting so much live-humor and wisdom in 80 minutes.’ (Hamburger Abendblatt)

Artistic Direction & Choreography: Angela Guerreiro; Created & performed by: Aloisio Avaz, Cristina Moura, Angela Guerreiro and Marc Rees; Dramaturgy: Mårten Spångberg; Music/Conception: Hendrik Lorenzen; Stage props: Tobacco Brown & Angela Guerreiro; Lights: Sérgio Pessanha; Costumes: Angela Guerreiro; Video: Marc Rees

Producer: DepArtment | Katharina von Wilcke Project Direction: DepArtment | Harriet Lesch Duration of the total piece: 80 min.

A co-production by Kampnagel Hamburg and Internationales Sommertheater Festival Hamburg with Angela Guerreiro Prod. in Cooperation with DepArtment. With the support of Kulturbehörde der Freien und Hansestadt Hamburg.

Bastard Memory | 1996-97

In her solo, Angela Guerreiro transformed into an androgynous being with abrupt changes of nature. Foreign bodies and memories that she has absorbed and recorded in her physical memory are projected onto her body as onto a screen.
A few distinctive movements coalesce to form figures of uncertain origin: familiar or observed people, characters out of video clips, computer simulations or dreams?

In a time when the utopia of an authentic identity and physicality has faded, the dancer’s body produces bizarre creatures – humorous and strange – memories and figures both powerful and broken; together these create a new, artificial, but also very lively body.
Linked to the music, rhythmically interconnected with the compositions of Hendrik Lorenzen, the figure of Angela Guerreiro reflects the power and confusion of a radically changing world.

Bastard Memory at the SommerTheater Festival, the dancer Angela Guerreiro has created a clear and consistent solo work to a sound collage by Hendrik Lorenzen.
For a few seconds, flashing stop-lights render visible the face, body parts or the silhouette of the dancer in the darkness of the empty stage. In the story told by Guerreiro, the lights of the city reduce people to shadows, dissolve individuality.
She takes images and movements observed in everyday life, dissects male and female gestures and reassembles them in new sequences. This dance synthesis creates new figures – simultaneously artificial and realistic. (…)
The expressive qualities and rhythms change at lightning speed. The mask for fear dissolves into silent laughter. It’s fun to watch. She splits the body into sections: her arms and legs seem to lead a life of their own, and single movement sequences grow ever faster – while remaining highly precise. This alienated body becomes a projection screen for the surrounding world. Its natural harmonies, its original idiom, are lost. The dancer seems to be assembled from fragments of memory. (Hamburger Morgenpost, 22.8.96)

Angela Guerreiro’s biography to date is highly varied. And one can imagine that the intimate play of movement in Bastard Memorytouches on all those experienced memories and invented possibilities of herself as performing artist – like a new voyage of discovery. It starts like the journey of a sleeping person in a jolting train. She is startled awake, moulds her face into a grimace until the head rolls to one side and the body slumps down again. Like images in a dream, her hands transmute to revolvers, aim at her own body, prod it in a process of self-confrontation.
Guerreiro’s dance is a rythmical dialogue: she answers inner impulses with sequences of clear, alert accents.(…)
The space of changing memories is filled with sharp-edged light zones, created by Sérgio Pessanha, which dissect the body. ‚Bastard Memory‘ is a quiet summary, a precise reflection, transparent and highly charged, stylish and completely without vanity. And it is a portrait of a wonderful dancer. (Die Welt, 22.8.96)

Artistic direction, Choreography and Dance: Angela Guerreiro
Music: Hendrik Lorenzen
Light: Sérgio Pessanha
Costumes: Angela Guerreiro & Tina Klietz
Assistance: Fátima Niza
Duration of the piece: 50 minutes

An Angela Guerreiro Prod. With the support of Internationales Sommertheater Festival Hamburg and Kampnagel Hamburg. Premiere at the Sommertheater Festival Hamburg with further performances in Antwerp, Cardiff, Kampnagel Hamburg and Potsdam.

In 1996 the CD Bastard Memory was produced by Hendrik Lorenzen under the label manifatture criminali in Hamburg.