Return from Chile
Top (left) Milca Galea, (middle) Daniela Álvarez, and (right) BODYART dancer Luke Dakota Zender. Bottom (left) Artistic Director Leslie Scott, (right) Translator extraordinaire Francisco Peña Donoso.
BODYART started 2022 with a bang. We spent the majority of January in Chile where we presented hymn+them, hosted masterclasses, devised new work, and engaged with the communities of Valdivia, Valparaiso, Calle Larga, and Puerto Montt.
As many of you know, BODYART began a cultural exchange initiative with Chilean dance collective, Corredor de Danza Valparaiso. (See earlier posts here.) Back in 2018 BODYART and CDV (another women-led company) began dreaming of ways dance artists could collaborate to leverage resources and opportunities for one another in their respective countries. What resulted was a tour across Chile that prioritized community engagement, education, and cross-cultural collaboration. Our tour was not only successful but also provided us with new perspectives and priorities when presenting work.
As you can imagine, organizing a tour to Chile during a pandemic came with its own challenges. All of us vaccinated, boosted, tested, and re-tested never caught COVID-19, but it definitely posed a threat. Two technical assistants dropped out of the production and one of our venues closed due to COVID-19 exposure. But instead of describing the obstacles we encountered, we’d rather tell you about what we’re celebrating.
Cross-Cultural Collaboration
The women that makeup Corredor de Danza, Milca Galea, Daniela Álvarez, and Keny Huerta Pastén, established several collaborative opportunities for BODYART to engage with Chilean dancers and artists. One such introduction was to Ignacio Diaz of Centro de Experimentación Escénica (CEE). Diaz is not only a choreographer but a professor at Universidad Austral. The first leg of the tour brought us to Validiva where we led dance-for-camera classes and devised a new site-specific dance film made in collaboration with CEE and the students of Universidad Austral. We’re still in the process of editing, but we can’t wait to show what we made.
BODYART made another new work with CDV in Valparaiso, too. Both companies took over Maestranza Baron to create a site-specific piece that traveled inside and on top of train cars, atop concrete columns, and in between shipping containers. Don’t worry, we filmed the whole thing. We’re editing it, but we’ll share it as soon as we can!
International Presentation
The second leg of the tour brought us to Valparaiso, a seaside city full of activists, radicals, and artists. We performed at two of the three scheduled venues (thanks COVID), but each venue was a cultural center important to their respective communities. When designing the tour BODYART and CDV decided that one of the priorities of presenting international work should be decentralization and accessibility. We focused on rural or non-metropolitan communities. Our performances were free and included a talk-back/discussion about the work. (Shout out to our amazing translators!) We found engaging with communities that do not have regular access to international performance made presenting more worthwhile. It's definitely something we plan on repeating in the future.
FIIN Nómade Intercultural Festival
We traveled south for the final leg of the tour where we engaged with the community of Perto Montt at FIIN Nómade Intercultural Festival. We filmed the live presentation of hymn+them at Parque Cultural Valparaiso weeks earlier and edited it as a 60-minute virtual offering for festival participants to enjoy. We screened the film and hosted a dance-for-camera workshop. We found so much joy in teaching site-specific choreography and dance-for-camera. Our participants were enthusiastic and inspiring. We can’t wait to connect with them again!
What’s Next ?
We want to continue our cultural exchange. So we’re bringing our new friends to New Orleans! Through this year and part of next, we’ll be working with CDV and CEE on designing a tour across Louisiana. (If you are interested in any of our Chilean collaborators and their work, let us know!)
Look Out!
Our time in Chile will continue to influence the ways we design tours in the future. The more we engaged with the community, the more rewarding our experience was. Thank you for your continued support! We’ll share some of our favorite pictures and videos from the tour in the coming weeks.