Alliance of International Production Houses

With Climatic Dances, Amanda Piña explores the current loss of cultural and biological diversity on the planet. The choreographer strongly concentrates on the way our perceptions of earth have changed through time and throughout different historical genealogies and ontologies. The central point of the performance is formed by the debate about a landscape from Amanda Piña’s biography, a mountain in the central Chilean Andes that is being destroyed through the very critically discussed neo-extractivism, resource mining within the framework of neoliberal market economy. In Climatic Dances, the mountain becomes a place from which pain and anger can be shared, mourned for, and stored. Two dances from the northern Puebla highland in Mexico, “Tipekajomeh” and “Wewentiyo”, performed by the indigenous Masewal people in the context of climate change and excessive mining, form the starting point for a journey into the depths of this endangered mountain. A magic charge for that which modern science calls “geology”.

Climatic Dances constitutes the fifth part of the long-term study Endangered Human Movements. Since 2014, choreographer Amanda Piña has been conducting this research on the advancing loss of the planet’s cultural and biological diversity.
Performances, workshops, installations, publications, and an online archive reconstruct human movement practices that are on the verge of disappearing, putting them into a fresh and different context, negotiating them anew. Amanda Piña guested at tanzhaus nrw with the second instalment of the study, Dance & Resistance, in 2018. The fourth part, Danza y Frontera, could unfortunately not be shown at tanzhaus nrw last year, due to the pandemic.

Artistic direction, choreography: Amanda Piña; choreographic transmission: Juan Carlos Palma, Cristina Sandino; Live-performance: Amanda Piña, Lina Venegas, Denise Palmieri; Music, Composition: Christian Müller; Design, lighting, stage, costumes: Michel Jimenez; Technical support: Leszek Stryła; Research, theory: Alessandro Questa, Amanda Piña, Juan Carlos Palma; Video-camera: Amanda Piña; Costume production: Julia Trybula; Editing: estudioelgozo; Production: nadaproductions; International distribution, tourmanagement: Something Great (Berlin); Senior advisor: Marie-Christine Baratta-Dragono; Financial administration: Angela Vadori (SMart).
Co-produced by tanzhaus nrw, Museo Universitario el Chopo (Mexico), Tanzquartier Wien and deSingel (Antwerpen). Amanda Piña / nadaproductions is funded by the cultural department of the city of Vienna, The National School of Folkloric Dance of Mexico, DAS THIRD – Amsterdam University of the Arts, Rudolfsheim-Fünfhaus, FONCA Programa Nacional de Creadores Escénicos 2019) and the department for arts & culture of Bundesministerium für Kunst, Kultur, öffentlichen Dienst und Sport Österreich. With the support by the Mexican embassy in Austria, The National School of Folkloric Dance of Mexico, Skanes Danstheater (Malmö), DAS THIRD – Amsterdam University of the Arts and La Caldera (Barcelona) as part of a technical residency. This guest performance takes place as part of Bündnis internationaler Produktionshäuser, supported by die Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien.