CPA: Amanda Piña / nadaproductions "Exótica"

"Exótica" sees itself as an homage to all those forgotten performers of colour who did not find a place in the canon of dance history and are only now slowly being rediscovered.

The title reflects the practice of categorising art forms that are sexually charged and read as "foreign", which still goes on today. In order to make this phenomenon and its contemporary resonances visible, Amanda Piña and her ensemble travel back into the past in her new dance performance, where she revives the eroticised and, in some cases, queer stage artists La Sarabia, Nyota Inyoka, François "Féral" Benga and Leila Bederkhan, who toured Europe with great success in the 1920s, in an exceptional form of séance. Here, she not only reveals the exoticising white gaze whose prevailing preconceptions about what was "Oriental enough" or "African enough" restricted artists’ room for manoeuvre. At the same time, Amanda Piña demonstrates the force with which the artists named were able to use this limited space to create choreographies of outstanding artistic quality that can still be viewed now in the form of drawings and visual documentation. "Exótica" is dedicated to these dances and sees itself as an homage to all those forgotten performers of colour who did not find a place in the canon of dance history and are only now slowly being rediscovered. For, even though the archives contain numerous newspaper articles attesting to their great popularity, after the Second World War, these dancers increasingly disappeared from European stages and popular memory.

An Austrian premiere within the framework of Choreographic Platform Austria. A reprise is scheduled for April 2024.