News – Border-Dancing Across Time

Amanda Piña / nadaproductions EXÓTICA

Christina Gillinger-Correa Vivar — Sat, 03 Jun 2023 16:35:38 +0000

The project’s research could find its way onto the stage and to a wide audience through the performance by and with Ángela Muñoz Martínez, André Bared Kabangu Bakambay, Venuri Perera, iSaAc Espinoza Hidrobo, Amanda Piña / Dramaturgy by Nicole Haitzinger. Besides Nyota Inyoka this work made appear further forgotten dancers of modernity: François (Féral) Benga, Leyla Bederkhan and Clemencia Piña “La Sarabia”. The world premiere was celebrated at Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels on June 1st 2023 and the work is touring through Europe. Find the evening program here. And if you would like to see an Interview with Amanda Piña, click here. The Ruhrtriennale (Sara Abbasi), where the piece is presented in September 2023, published the article Transcending Established Identities and produced a conversation between dramaturge Nina Bade and Nicole Haitzinger as introduction talk.

And here you can read a review by the brilliant writer Giulia Casalini that was published in Dance Art Journal on August 21st 2023.

Interview with Amanda Piña on French Language by Wilson Le Personnic on maculture.fr.

Workshopday at Paris-Lodron University Salzburg

Christina Gillinger-Correa Vivar — Tue, 07 Jun 2022 17:52:38 +0000

For an intense day of exchange, we invited theorists from various fields to share their perspectives on Nyota Inyoka’s oeuvre on Friday April 1st 2022:

Urmimala Sarkar (social anthropologist specialized in dance and visual culture, New Delhi),
Inge Baxmann (cultural scientist, Berlin),
Anne Décoret-Ahiha (dance anthropologist, Lyon),
Pauline Chevalier (art historian, Paris)

Fotos: Christina Gillinger-Correa Vivar, Gerrit Berenike Heiter

Press article on Border-Dancing Across Time

Christina Gillinger-Correa Vivar — Thu, 19 May 2022 20:57:00 +0000

On May 22nd 2022 Austrian Newspaper Die Presse released a piece by Claudia Lagler on the project that you can read here.

Presentation at Centre national de la danse – CN D

Christina Gillinger-Correa Vivar — Wed, 16 Feb 2022 20:59:59 +0000

Within the framework of the project “Contemporary Reflections on Nyota Inyoka” Sandra Chatterjee, Christina Gillinger-Correa Vivar, Nicole Haitzinger, Gerrit Berenike Heiter and Amanda Piña presented their insights at the CND near Paris. The presentation will be available online until the 8th of March 2022. Furthermore the team could visit the fashion museum (Musée de la Mode de la Ville de Paris) and see some pieces of Nyota’s private wardrobe designed by Paul Poiret, Mouna Katorza and Madame Grès.

Research Presentation @CND

left to right: Gerrit Berenike Heiter, Nicole Haitzinger, Christina Gillinger-Correa Vivar, Sandra Chatterjee on ZOOM

Television report on Border-Dancing Across Time in ORF Salzburg

Christina Gillinger-Correa Vivar — Wed, 16 Feb 2022 20:58:04 +0000

Robert Schabetsberger filmed and edited an insight into the projects research for the Austrian local television programme ORF Salzburg. The appeal with interviews with Sandra Chatterjee, Christina Gillinger-Correa Vivar, Nicole Haitzinger and Linda Samaraweerová was on air on Saturday Jan 8th 2022. More Info still on the programme’s webpage.

Dancing with Nyota in Paris

Christina Gillinger-Correa Vivar — Fri, 17 Sep 2021 19:38:15 +0000

Thanks to the project “Contemporary Reflections on Nyota Inyoka” in the framework of “Aide à la Recherche” at Centre national de la danse – CN D Amanda Piña could join the team for an intense research phase: Dancing in the Marais, viewing material at BnF Richelieu and visiting the venues that Nyota used to show her dances at, like the Salle Adyar, Palais de Chaillot, Salle Gaveau, Théâtre des Champs Élysées, Théâtre du Rond Point, Théâtre Marigny, Le Théâtre du Vieux Colombier and Les Folies Bergère.

Forgotten Dancers // Forgotten Archives Part 3

Christina Gillinger-Correa Vivar — Wed, 07 Jul 2021 18:48:00 +0000

On July 3rd 2021 the team gave the workshop Remembering Nyota Inyoka: Körperliche und dialogische Arbeit mit Notaten gegen das Vergessen at Köşk in Munich with Sandra Chatterjee, Franz Anton Cramer and Lina Venegas organized by CHAKKARs – Moving Interventions.

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Fotos: Christoph Mukherjee

Oral History Interview in Paris and online research exchange

Christina Gillinger-Correa Vivar — Wed, 04 Nov 2020 17:39:38 +0000

Nicole Haitzinger and Christina Gillinger-Correa Vivar met Malavika Klein, former dancer in Nyota Inyoka’s company for an oral history interview. She was kind to receive us in her Parisian home and gave valuable insights not only to Inyoka’s way of creating and working with her students. She also shed light on the spirit of the time as well as the context of and relationships between dancers in Paris of the 1940s and 1950s whose work related to Indian culture and dance traditions.

Another research meeting had to be transferred to the virtual space. The whole team gathered with Sneharika Roy, Associate Professor for Comparative Literature and English at the American University of Paris, to reflect on Inyoka’s poetic writing. Her point of view and expertise triggered some new and ambivalent directions in thinking on this part of the artistic oeuvre as well as Inyoka’s positionality as an artist of colour living in colonial France.

These activities were part of the research project Contemporary Reflections on Nyota Inyoka co-funded by Centre national de la danse (CND Pantin / France) Aide à la Recherche et au Patrimoine en Danse in cooperation with the Project Border-Dancing Across Time (Austrian Science Fund, University of Salzburg – Department of Music and Dance Studies) and Tanzquartier Wien.

Photos from left to right: Nyota Inyoka and her dancers taken from a photograph by courtesy of Malavika Klein. Salon and collection of masks and musical instruments of Malavika.
Featured Image at the top of the page: Malavika Klein.
(c) Christina Gillinger-Correa Vivar

Contemporary Reflections on Nyota Inyoka

Christina Gillinger-Correa Vivar — Fri, 04 Sep 2020 10:18:49 +0000

Project funded by Centre national de la danse (CND Pantin / France) Aide à la Recherche et au Patrimoine en Danse in cooperation with the Project Border-Dancing Across Time (Austrian Science Fund, University of Salzburg – Department of Music and Dance Studies) and Tanzquartier Wien.

For the interdisciplinary research project Contemporary Reflections on Nyota Inyoka the team of Border-Dancing Across Time will be joined by Mexican-Chilean-Austrian choreographer Amanda Piña for a shared process of moved/movement reflection on and re-embodiment of Nyota Inyoka’s work with German-Indian choreographer-scholar Sandra Chatterjee. The two contemporary female choreographers of color are engaged in critical processes concerned with post- and decolonial theories and practices. The exchange will be based on an engagement with materials available at the Fonds Nyota Inyoka at Bibliotheque Nationale de France (BnF), focusing mostly Inyoka’s notations, photos, sketches and writings from contemporary ‘of-color’ perspectives in dialogue with the primarily theoretical and dance historical research project Border-Dancing Across Time.

In addition, Contemporary Reflections on Nyota Inyoka will establish interdisciplinary dialogues with experts from literature (Prof. Dr. Sneharika Roy) and Indian dance practice (Malavika Klein – former dancer in Nyota Inyoka’s corps de ballet).

In the course of their research process, they will physically respond to Inyoka’s dances and work based on the traces left by Inyoka’s notations and sketches and self-archived evidences of her œuvre, enriched by the interdisciplinary discussions. Inyoka’s early work is paradigmatic for European modernity’s fascination of ‘otherness’ and ‘the exotic’, while her later, lesser known, work dives deeply into Indian and Egyptian systems of movement classification, theories of yoga and aesthetic concepts – conceptually likely at a distance from the developments of European modern dance as well as classical dance in India post WWII. Her later work appears to be asynchronous with mainstream European dance history, leading to the marginalization of her œuvre in its transmission and official archives. Until today, contemporary dance, in line with colonial modernityoften functions by way of othering or excluding culturally or ethnically marked dances or dancers, as well as movement systems, systems of composition and aesthetic principles (cp. Chatterjee 2017/2018 + nadaproductions Endangered Human Movements Vols 1 ,2 & 3 , 2017, 2018, 2019).

Sandra Chatterjee and Amanda Piña have both in their own ways in multiple projects engaged with the exclusions reproduced in European contemporary dance as a colonial/modern context and tried to contribute to processes of decolonizing contemporary dance practices and institutions. In this project they will come together to respond each from their own perspective to Inyoka’s work. Their contribution lies in the forms of embodied knowledge present in dance practice and in their long term artistic reflections and positioning in relation to their bodies, gender in the context of whiteness. Nyota Inyoka’s authorial position can be paradigmatic to better understand contemporary ethics and politics in research and historiography, as well as reassess our current understanding of European cultural and aesthetic landscapes.

The project will take place between October 2020 and February 2022 with exchange phases in Paris (BnF and CND), Vienna (Tanzquartier Wien) and Salzburg (University of Salzburg – Department of Music and Dance Studies)