¡Vamos a Chile! (Next Year)
BODYART envisioned April with 100% vaccination roll-out, dwindling cases, and flattened curves. We also thought we’d be in Chile by now. Perhaps that was over-ambitious. But we’ve always been ambitious, so what else is new?
As BODYART and Corredor de Danza edged past the new year, we all thought deeply about our upcoming collaborations and hymn+them’s South American tour and watched the pandemic closely. By February we decided to push the tour back to January 2022.
And since then we’ve learned good things really do come to those who wait. We are now extending our tour by another week after receiving invitations to present hymn+them from FIIN Nómade Intercultural Festival, 53°70° Contemporary Dance Festival, and the Santiago Off Festival. We are absolutely blown away at how this tour is shaping up.
Some things remain the same. (Read more about our original Chile tour slated for this month.) We are still participating in creative residencies with Corredor de Danza in Valparaiso and Centro de Experimentación Escénica (CEE) in Valdivia to devise new site-specific work at some of their historic public spaces. And we are still committed to our 4-city tour of hymn+them across the Valparaiso region: Valparaiso, Quillota, Los Andes, and San Antonio.
So what’s changed? We’re adding 3 international festival presentations, more performances, more masterclasses, and more workshops. In short, January 2022 just got booked all the way up. (See our new tour dates at the end.)
With all the challenges COVID-19 has posed over the last 12 months, it’s been a struggle to remain hopeful and optimistic. But recently I’ve noticed my peers, colleagues, and community release a slow exhale. Things are starting to feel a little lighter. The scene ahead is starting to look a little brighter. And while it was sad (and a bit scary) to push the tour back, I am so grateful for what’s come out of it.
Here’s to renewal, growth, and hope. Happy Spring!
Now a little about these festivals…
FIIN Nómade Intercultural Festival in Puerto Montt
FIIN is a multidisciplinary festival for artists, organizations, and cultural agents at the local, regional, national, and international levels. FIIN provides a space for all to exchange dialogues, mediate between the performances and the public, disseminate various teaching methodologies, develop creative workshops and inspire new concepts in the arts. FIIN seeks to reveal through the exhibition and dissemination of works, talks, interviews, open classes, and other activities, various perspectives that shape creative ecosystems on a local, national and international scale. Puerto Montt is the capital of Chile’s Lakes District, in southern Chile. It boasts great views of the ocean, the snow-capped Andes, and the massive Osorno Volcano.
The 53°70° Contemporary Dance Festival in Punta Arenas
The 53°70° Contemporary Dance Festival is organized and produced by Zur Vértice Espacio de Artes Escénicas (Zur Vértice Performing Arts Space) and its main goal is to provide a meaningful meeting space for the arts and their community. The 53°70° Contemporary Dance Festival was founded with the mission to decentralize dance at the local, national and international levels. 53°70° is a festival that is located in the extreme south of Chile, being the southernmost dance festival in the world. Punta Arenas rests on the edge of Strait Magellan and is one of the largest cities in Chilean Patagonia. It is very close to the Antarctic Peninsula, making it a perfect launch point for excursions to the frozen wilds of Antarctica (maybe the location of our next dance film?) Lucky for us, January is usually the warmest time of the year.
Santiago Off Festival
Santiago Off is a multi-discipline arts festival in Chile’s capital city. Santiago Off Foundation believes it is essential to generate a space for the exchange of knowledge and to open the channels of reflection on the future of the world's performing arts. The 2022 Santiago Off Festival is conceptualized as a place to be reunited with the Performing Arts, in constant dialogue and adaptation with social processes and citizens. Santiago Off’s mission is two-fold: linking art with citizens and strengthening the professional sector of the performing arts. They are dedicated to increasing accessibility and work hard so that all citizens have access to see shows, live experiences, acquire training tools and develop their own expressions in the artistic-cultural fields. Santiago is Chile’s cultural, political, and financial center. The city is surrounded by vineyards and within an hour of both mountains and the Pacific ocean.
Tour Dates
Jan 3-5 | Creative Residency in Valparaiso with Corredor de Danza
Jan 6 | Presentation of new work
Jan 8-10 | Creative residency Valdivia with CEE
Jan 11 | Presentation of new work
Jan 14-15 | FIIN
Jan 18 | 53°70° Contemporary Dance Festival
Jan 22-23 | Santiago Off Festival
Jan 25-28 | Valparaiso Tour
25th | Parque Cultural Valparaíso
27th | Centro Cultural de Los Andes
Jan 27-28 | Moving to Heal Workshops
