Somatic Sauce 2020 – annotating Love Therapy and celebration

ABSTRACT

Using Motion Bank’s web-based annotation and publication tools, dance educator Amelia Uzategui Bonilla engages in remote collaboration with international colleagues in times of Corona. They share a praxis in vernacular dance languages, in this case those with African and Indigenous influences from Latin American. This document details a decolonial dance documentation approach featuring recorded classes and interviews with Alberto Barrios, based in Bogota, Colombia and Carmen Román from Oakland, California. Román dances Festejo, a dance cultivated by Peru’s African descendants. Barrios dances Champeta, a genre developed in the 1980s in Cartagena. Their analysis and discussion gain insights on these complex movement forms and the knowledges they contain. A supplementary webpage includes annotated videos of their online classes and conversations on the basis of these. Practice-specific verbalization identifies a lexicon constructed from imagery related to social, political and natural environments. The combination of audiovisual and written material in this document and its corresponding website demonstrates their approach to teaching dances rooted in Black and Indigenous cultures. It also speaks to the potential of documenting dance collaborations during the COVID-19 Quarantine.

KEYWORDS:

• Dance Education
• Latin American culture
• popular culture
• annotation
• dance documentation
• decoloniality

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Latinx is a reappropriation of the term Latino, a term which does not represent the Indigenous, African, queer and gender non-conforming populations in the lands known as Latin-America. However, ‘latinx' continues to be used in contexts that do not acknowledge racist, imperialist histories in Latin-America. For further argumentation, see the work of writers Alan Pelaez Lopez and Dash Harris.

2 Full quote, ‘they expropriated the cultural discoveries of the colonized peoples most apt for the development of capitalism to the profit of the European center'.

3 Popular dance here is in reference to popular culture, to the non-academic dance expressions of laboring class people often from Black and/or Indigenous identities.

4 Regarding the version used see Florian Jenett on the early 2020 update of the tool (2020).

5 See http://scores.motionbank.org/somatic-sauce/.

6 Kebra aka Maldita GeniThalia (2020) founder of the ‘desculonización’ movement since 2015 Transfeminism, interviews, music, gatherings, and discussion based in Mexico City.

7 Alberto Barrios, interviews with author, via Zoom, June and August 2020. In his class, Atala Bernal assisted him with movement and Spanish-English translation.

8 For an audio visual example in the style of Champeta Africana piques, see YouTube Videos of “El Gran Lobo,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2gViz73bkU

9 The Colegio del Cuerpo is a non-profit contemporary dance academy, founded by Álvaro Restrepo and Marie France Delieuvin 20 years ago in Cartagena de Indias.

10 This documentary on Champeta's history by Red de Bibliotecas shares the perspective of Champeta musicians, echoing what Alberto told us: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeM67CyPC18

11 See ‘Article interview reference 1: Alberto’s warm up' in Alberto’s unedited class video, annotated: http://scores.motionbank.org/somatic-sauce/.

12 Dance group performs Mapalé in Cartagena, Colombia, https://youtu.be/mFdVqhnsI_s. Link provided by Alberto Barrios.

13 See ‘Article interview reference 2: Mapalé Basic Step' in Alberto’s edited class video; http://scores.motionbank.org/somatic-sauce/.

14 See ‘Article interview reference 3: Stirring Arequipe' in Alberto’s edited class video; http://scores.motionbank.org/somatic-sauce/.

15 See ‘Article interview reference 4: Shaking the Rice' in Alberto’s edited class video; http://scores.motionbank.org/somatic-sauce/.

16 See ‘Article interview reference 5: Longer Sequence’ in Alberto’s edited class video; http://scores.motionbank.org/somatic-sauce/.

17 See ‘Article interview reference 6: Reflection: Alberto’ in Alberto’s edited class video; http://scores.motionbank.org/somatic-sauce/.

18 Carmen Román, combination of two interviews with author, via Zoom, August 2020.

19 See ‘Article interview reference 7: Carmen’s Introduction' in Carmen’s unedited class video, annotated; http://scores.motionbank.org/somatic-sauce/.

20 Eva Ayllón and Perú Negro. Here is an example of a traditional Afro-Peruvian dance company, Perú Negro, founded in 1969 and continuing to perform as a project-based company today.

21 See ‘Article interview reference 8: Grounding' in Carmen’s edited class; http://scores.motionbank.org/somatic-sauce/.

22 See ‘Article interview reference 9: Sweeping' in Carmen’s edited class; http://scores.motionbank.org/somatic-sauce/.

23 Polyrhythm in movement is when there is more than one rhythmic base present in the body’s movement, for example, hips moving on a waltz rhythm, and feet moving at marching rhythm, or hips at 3/4 time and feet at 2/4 time. See Gottschild for a definition of Polyrhythm as an identifier of the Africanist Aesthetic (Gottschild 1996).

24 Victoria Santa Cruz, ‘Hay Que Barrer’.

25 See ‘Article interview reference 10: Carmen’s Warm-up: Brushing' in Carmen’s unedited class video, annotated; http://scores.motionbank.org/somatic-sauce/.

26 Victoria Santa Cruz was born in 1922 and died in 2014. She and her brother, Nicomedes Santa Cruz, were important figures revitalizing the Afro-Peruvian cultural heritage and artistic traditions. She is internationally known for her teaching as a professor at Carnegie Mellon University and also for Eugenio Barba’s film of her piece, ‘Me Gritaron Negra' (1978).

27 Gutierrez (2018). This question was inspired in part by Gutierrez’s essay on race and abstraction.

28 See ‘Article interview reference 11: Longer Sequences' in Carmen’s edited class; http://scores.motionbank.org/somatic-sauce/.

29 See ‘Article interview reference 12: Participants’ Reflections' in Carmen’s edited class; http://scores.motionbank.org/somatic-sauce/.

30 See Anna Halprin’s collaboration with Lawrence Halprin to create the R.S.V.P. Cycles for scoring. In the structure of a score, there is an intention set for each score. This intention can be then how the score is later evaluated or ‘valuacted’ (Halprin 1969).

31 See ‘Article interview reference 13: Carmen Watching Video' in conversation with Carmen Román; http://scores.motionbank.org/somatic-sauce/.

Additional information

Funding

This research was initiated as Somatic Sauce 2020, a solidarity-based online platform. In Fall 2020, the writing on this document was completed with the ‘Hessen kulturell neu eröffnen – Übergang meistern – Arbeitsstipendien,’ awarded by the Hessische Kulturstiftung.

Notes on contributors

Amelia Fernanda Uzategui Bonilla

Amelia Fernanda Uzategui Bonilla (she/they) creates transdisciplinary curriculum and performances centering decolonial and postmigranten subjectivities. Born in Peru, and raised in California, they have collaborated with Anna Halprin, the Tamalpa Institute, Tino Sehgal, Marina Abramović, Luna Dance Institute, NAKA Dance Theater, and Cunamacué, Afro-Peruvian dance theater. They completed a BFA in Dance at the Juilliard School and an MA in Contemporary Dance Education at the Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts. Amelia is based in Frankfurt, Germany working towards an upcoming premiere in Spring 2021, Perfectionism Detox: a dance with voices from the South. They serve on the board of ID_Frankfurt e.V. (Independent Dance and Performance) and co-direct the Tanzhaus Frankfurt Rhein-Main.