'Que corra el aire', espectáculo de danza contemporánea

Casa África and its África en Movimiento (Africa in Motion) programme continue to support contemporary African dance through various actions such as the creative residences and the support of projects like Danza África (Africa Dance).

The aim of this project is to create a cooperative contemporary dance performance that is able to stimulate synergies between the Canary Islands and Senegal through creativity. Its objectives include to create a collaborate space for exchange of dancers and professionals of the performing or stage arts, and to develop inter-regional dance education proposals.

The project will take place with various phases of action, training, staging and distributing its results throughout Senegal and the Canary Islands. A total of 25 dancers and various institutions from both regions will participate in the programme.

The participating entities include the Nómada (Tenerife) and Aex-Corps (Dakar) companies, but the actions and their results will reach a wide array of settings and audiences, especially dancers, spectators, students in training, performing artists, programmers and cultural managers.

The África en Movimiento (Africa in Motion) programme is a Casa  África initiative for promoting the presence of African stage artists in Spain, with the premises of public diplomacy for cultural cooperation events that are applied by the institution, avoiding paternalism and using these disciplines to bring Africa and Spain closer together. 

Initially, the programme will be focused on contemporary African dance, although it does not exclude the idea of becoming involved with other arts.  The confirmation that an enormous amount of choreographic wealth exists in the neighbouring continent, which has yet to be discovered by Spanish audiences, has been the deciding factor for setting this programme into motion.

Just as is stated in the 2nd Africa Plan, Africa en Movimiento addresses the desire to "contribute towards improving mutual knowledge between Spanish society and African societies by fostering the dissemination of a plural and contemporary image of both, and promoting exchange and collaboration processes between the two cultures."  Following this principle, Casa África´s commitment to Pan-African stage arts rests on these objectives:

1.    To bring Africa closer to public Spanish opinions by using stage arts to provide a real image of the continent, its potential and heterogeneity.

2.    To work closely with the professional stage arts industry in Africa so as to understand its interests and priorities, contributing towards finding potential counterparts in Spain and promoting contact.

3.    To act as a speaker of this industry´s interests and priorities for Spain and the European Union.

4.    To promote creative residencies of African dancers/choreographers in Spain´s choreography centres.  For 2011, Casa África has planned to collaborate with three choreography centres of reference in our country:  the Centro Coreográfico de La Gomera, the Mercat de les Flors and the Centro Párraga.

The artistic residencies at the Centro Coreográfico de la Gomera were established with the objective of hosting creators during short stays in order to collaborate with offering African creations in its facilities. The Centro Coreográfico will offer a public performance of the work up to the point that has been reached in the creative process. Thanks to this, residents of San Sebastián de La Gomera will be able to enjoy the varied regional, national and international offering of dance and arts in motion.

One of the products resulting from this project is the Nómada dance-theatre company´s tour of the "Que corra el aire" performance (see poster), which will visit the following cities:

• 26/03/2011. Auditorio de Santa Cruz de Tenerife

• 01/04/2011. Auditorio de Los Realejos

• 07/04/2011. Ferrol

• 08, 09 y 10/04/2011. Sala Teatro Ensalle de Vigo 

• 15 y 16/04/2011. Sala Endanza de Sevilla

• 30/04/2011. Coslada

• 05, 06, 07 y 08/05/2011. Sala Carmen Teatre de Valencia

• 19, 20, 21 y 22/05/2011. Sala Triángulo de Madrid

• 27, 28 y 29/05/2011. Sala La Fundición de Bilbao

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