Frontera / Procesión, un ritual del agua [Border / Procession, A Water Ritual] Performance by Amanda Piña

For Amanda Piña, a border is not only a place but an indelible print on our bodies: a mark of protest against every colonial paradigm of universalism that is shared only by those who embody a common history of oppression. In Frontera/ Procesión, un ritual del agua, Amanda Piña works with a mixed cast of performers from her own company and a large group of women, amateur dancers and members of local and other Madrid neighbourhood associations who share these experiences. The aim of including social and cultural associations from the city is to strengthen the solidarity with and between people who identify as women in different vulnerable situations.

The performance forms part of Volume 4 of the art research project Endangered Human Movements, which is focused on the reappearance of ancestral forms of movement.

Piña’s research is centred around a street dance that emerged in the 1990s in the El Ejido Veinte district of Matamoros, Tamaulipas, on the Mexican-US border. Initiated by Rodrigo de la Torre, it is danced by young working-class men in a border context of violence and precarious labour conditions. It harks back to the creation of the so-called “dances of conquest”, initially conceived by the Spanish crown to represent the Christian victory over the Moors in the Iberian Peninsula and then exported to Abya Yala (the American continent) for use as racist propaganda during the colonisation. Over time, the dances have reversed their colonial origin and become tools for embodying forms of resistance, “re-conquest” and self-determination.

Show and artist information:

• Artistic Direction & Choreography: Amanda Piña

• Art Design: Michel Jimenez

• Choreography: Rodrigo de la Torre Coronado, Amanda Piña

• Transmisión Danza de Matamoros: Rodrigo de la Torre Coronado, Dafne del Carmen, Moreno Huerta, Matilde Amigo

• Danza: Rodrigo de la Torre Coronado, Marîe Mazzer, Dafne del Carmen Moreno Huerta

• Research: Nicole haitzinger, Juan Carlos Palma Velasco, Amanda Piña

• Performance: Dafne del Carmen Moreno, Rodrigo de la Torre Coronado, Mariê Mazer,

• Music and composition: Christian Müller

• Live percussion: Jorge Luis Cruz Carrera 

• Research / Theory /Dramaturgy: Nicole Haitzinger, Amanda Piña

• Costume: La mata del veinte / Julia Trybula

• Production: nadaproductions

• Management and Distribution: Something Great
• Administration: Angela Vadori Smart.at
• Senior Adviser: Marie–Christine Barrata Dragono

Coproduction EHM Volume 4

Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Arts Finland, asphalt Festival

Düsseldorf | Funded by: City of Vienna (Kulturabteilung der Stadt Wien) | The research of

EHM Vol.4 Danza y Frontera was developed with the support of: Mexican Ministry of

Foreign Affairs, Mexican Embassy in Vienna the National School of Folkloric Dance of

México, INBA, National Institute of Fine Arts México | Performances in Brussels with the

support of the Österreichischen Kulturforums Brüssel, DANCE ON TOUR Austria (DOTA).