2023 – Amanda Piña/ nadaproductions – EXÓTICA – Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Brussels (BE) – costume design

A tropical jungle based on a historical decor occupies the stage of Théâtre Royal des Galeries. The painted palm trees evoke the exotic fantasies of another time. In this spectacular scenography, a choreography emerges mixing rapid movements and unconventional rhythms danced by performers wearing mirror-clad costumes. Choreographer Amanda Piña creates an exuberant ritual conceived as a séance through which dancers evoke their spiritual ancestors and come into conversation with the audience’s gaze. Their presence opens a space for invocation, exorcism, and celebration. For this presentation, the festival is welcomed for the very first time in the magical hall of Théâtre Royal des Galeries. In this Italian-style theatre, we find evidence of former splendour; red and gold velvet, a monumental chandelier, and the ceiling fresco by René Magritte. This Art Deco temple recalls an era when Black and artists of colour had to don exotic costumes before being given a place on stage. Amanda Piña and her team reinstall these forgotten and invisibled artists in the European canon with an evening of dance not to be missed!

2022 – Mary Szydlowska – Leaks – Brussels Gallery Weekend, Brussels (BE) – costume design

LEAKS is a performance and installation developed by Mary Szydlowska throughout her two year long research on practices of cleaning and maintenance. Cleaning, as a practice of potentialities and subversion, loosening up the world’s hierarchies on a very molecular level, became hijacked by the regimes of sanitisation. What do the cleaning bodies do? What are the gestures of labour and the gestures of care in the actual world always on the brink of oblivion? The landscape of (dis)orders grows. The gestures land in pollution and dirt.

2022 – Amanda Piña/ nadaproductions – The School of Mountains and Water – Tanzquartier Wien, Vienna (AT) – costume design & performance

With Mountains in Resistance – The School of Mountains and Water, Amanda Piña continues her long-term research into the ongoing loss of our planet’s cultural and biological diversity. The three-day program will include lectures, discussions, and installations at TQW Studios, a bus tour followed by a performative parcours in the mountains. The potential interplay of art, indigenous knowledge, activism, and scientific research is at the heart of the choreographer’s work. Similar to Climatic Dances, this project will also try to redefine the relationship between humans and mountains in the context of indigenous knowledge practices from the Americas.

Mountains in Resistance is conceived as a school of unlearning the modern/colonial idea of the Human as pre-existent and separated from that which sustains its life, proposing connections of care between human bodies and bodies of mountains, glaciers, and water. It is, therefore, key to recognize mountains as living bodies, active in the reproduction of water as life. The School’s Vienna iteration taps into the history of the First Vienna Mountain Spring Pipeline, entangling past struggles for the democratization of access to safe drinking water with current ecological concerns, raising the question of whether the city’s water supply is as endless as it seems.

2021 – Rocio Marano – MATRIA – Motherland  – Uferstudios, Berlin (DE) – costume design, 2021

Matria imagines a history that is not represented in colonial, hegemonic narratives. In an exploration of Malambo, the resistance dance of the gauchos, known today in Argentina mainly as a solo competition between men, the performance dismantles the disciplinary and patriarchal aspect of the dance and moves towards a dance of rebellion. In the crossover between traditional and contemporary dance, the standard of Western aesthetics is challenged to create space for other dance ontologies.

2020 – May Zarhy – Libelle – Explore Dance, HochX, Munich (DE) – costume & stage design

Every day, when the time is right, Libelle closes her eyes, invents her own language, and starts telling us her fantasy story… It’s a story which we don’t need to understand or to read, but one to feel, to watch, and to sing along to. This performance is both a dance show and music concert, where Libelle and her friends play with words and rhythms, mixing their voices and drum sounds and merging them into songs and movements. Shifting between acoustic and electronic, they morph into cool, mysterious, and colorful creatures.