Tanzquartier Wien

Based on the biography and work of French dancer and choreographer Nyota Inyoka (1896–1971), we will discuss the authorial position 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.

This lab is the second instalment in our research series Imaging otherwise – Invention of the present, which started with Tonica Hunter’s Aesthetics of Resistance in November 2020. Ligia Lewis will contribute to this series in April. Imaging otherwise creates a space for choreographic research and performance, with its eyes set on a political goal and dedicated to the fight against social inequality.