Amanda Piña & Rodrigo de la Torre
Danza y Frontera
© Rodrigo de la Torre
Field Project
11.7.–15.7.
10:00–16:00
TQW 3
Danza y Frontera
A choreography of resistance at the border between Mexico and the US.
This Field Project features live music by Christian Müller and Edgar Uriel Soria Rodriguez.
In this Field Project we will learn a dance from the neighbourhood of El Ejido Veinte of the city of Matamoros, Tamaulipas (MX), twin city of Brownsville, Texas (US). The dance arises in a context of extreme violence related to narco-traffic and narco-culture.
A contemporary pop-cultural appropriation of a historical "danza de conquista" (conquest dance), in which indigenous practices, colonial narratives, HipHop culture, armed conflicts and mysticism resonate. The dance was developed and updated by a group of youngsters from the neighbourhood under the direction of Rodrigo de la Torre.
In this week we want to teach the dance, the rhythms, the sign language or "mudras" related to each step, and to present and analyse this border-choreography, understood as an agent and catalyst for socio-cultural strategies of resistance by means of dancing and performing.
Requirements: a fast mind and body for steps and rhythmical patterns, energy and endurance, love for intense movement experience, critical thinking and sneakers.
Keywords: border-choreography, resistance, contempo-traditional, pop-culture, embodiment, narco-culture, decolonial thought.
With contributions by: Nicole Haitzinger, Alma Quintana and Juan Carlos Palma.
Nicole Haitzinger
Nicole Haitzinger is Professor at the Department of Art History, Musicology and Dance Studies at Universität Salzburg. She conducted her doctoral studies at the Insitute of Theatre, Film and Media Studies (TFM) at the University of Vienna. Former member of the DFG-funded research group on The Staging of Otherness in the 'Long' Nineteenth Century. Co-convenor of the university course Curation in the Performing Arts (with Sigrid Gareis and LMU). Co-speaker of the interdisciplinary Doctorate School gender_transcultural. Recent books: Resonanzen des Tragischen Zwischen Ereignis und Affekt (Turia + Kant, 2015), Chor-Figuren. Transdisziplinäre Beiträge (ed. with Julia Bodenburg and Katharina Grabbe, Rombach, 2016). Co-editor of CORPUS. Recent articles: Afro-Futurism or Lament? Staging Africa(s) in Dance Today and in the 1920s. In: Dance Research Journal 49/1, Cambridge University Press (April 2017); Performative Contours. In: Susanne Foellmer, Katharina Schmidt und Cornelia Schmitz (Hg.): Transfer in the Performing Arts: Moving Between Media. London: Routledge [2018]
Alma Quintana
Alma is an artist working in the field of choreography and dance. She has been involved to be agent of projects and spaces that reorganize perception and reception of experiences, where the body can empower knowledge and various relations. Her work has mainly experimented with memory processes and consciousness states in order to make appear specific presence and aesthetics. Teaching has an important role as it keeps her practice in feedback with different communities and contexts.
Graduated as contemporary dancer from the Fine Art Mexican Institute (INBA) she has been awarded several times from the National Fund for Culture and the Arts (FONCA) in Mexico to study as a guest at SNDO Theaterschool in Amsterdam and also to develop her last projects. She received from Iberescena the fund to do an artistic residency at Inhotim Institute in Brazil working with young participants from their educational program and with children from the surrounding Quilombos. In 2009 she obtained the Danceweb scholarship for the Impulstanz Festival in Vienna and in 2010 Jean-Marc Adolphe invited her to participate in the SKITE project in Caen, France.
Her last long research work Aparición, in collaboration with visual artist Lutz Baumann, includes diferent performances, an installation and a publication. She was part of the international project Interferencias which co-coordinated in 2010 and 2012, and is an active member of the Colectivo AM with whom she realizes 'Arrecife', commissioned by the University Museum of Contemporary Art (MUAC) under the curatorship of Alejandra Labastida, and 'Cartografias del presente', commissioned by the Museo Universitario del Chopo and the Goethe Institut in the dual year Mexico-Germany.
Currently she is leading the artistic platform ¿Cómo encender un fósforo? in collaboration with the curator Silverio Orduña and the choreographer and dancer Marta Sponzilli. In parallel she collaborates artistically with nadaproductions directed by Amanda Piña and is a regular teacher at the National Folk Dance School from the National Fine Arts Institute (INBA)
Juan Carlos Palma Velasco
Is a mixtec-mexican origin choregrapher, performer and researcher in the field of traditional/folkloric dance. His practice has been engaged with memory and identity processes, it’s embodiment and reenacment in the practice of traditional/folklóric dance. He works the body as a live archive that configurates possibilities of resistance.
He has a Master in Dance Research by the Centro Nacional de Investigación, Documentación e información de la Danza José Limón (CENIDID Mexico). Graduated as a Folk Dancer from Escuela Nacional de Danza Folklórica (ENDF) from de Fine Arts Institute in Mexico (INBA) and also is certified as a specialist in Language Of Dance (LOD - Ann Hutchinson-Guest) by the Language Of Dance Centre, U.K.
He was awarded from the Mexican National Art Fund (FONCA) by the program Creadores Escénicos (2016-17) to make his new piece that researches on men identity. He has also lectured at congresses of dance and research in Mexico, Havana, and Italy, and given workshops in Mexico and USA.
He is actually working as a teacher at the ENDF-INBA and is collaborating with Alma Quintana and Amanda Piña.
Amanda PiñaRodrigo de la Torre 
