Ulduz Ahmadzadeh / ATASH عطش Force Majeure

Based on the biography and work of French dancer and choreographer Nyota Inyoka (1896–1971), we will discuss the auctorial positioning of Women of Colour in dance historiographies. Through re-enactments, using notes, sketches, photographs and texts, we will study and explore Inyoka’s choreographic oeuvre. In response to this and in conversation with theoretical positions, we will investigate to what extent ‘contemporary dance’ can be situated within a matrix of colonial modernism even today, because dancers, movement and composition systems and aesthetic principles deemed culturally or ethnically ‘other’ are still being excluded. We will therefore also address the urgent need to decolonise historiographies and archives.