Andrea Peña & Artists - BOGOTÁ

Introductory text and Note from the choreographer

From the land of magical realism comes Andrea Peña with a work whose very title, BOGOTÁ, with which she won the international call of Biennale Danza for a new choreography, evokes her Latin-American origins, her unique capacity to combine the symbolic with the real, the world of the dead with that of the living, the sacred and the profane, in an expressive syncretism that maintains the connections between opposites.

Born in 1990, the Colombian choreographer and designer now based in Montréal, in BOGOTÁ, explores death and resurrection through history – which is the history of a colonisation, of the introduction of European Baroque culture into the autochthonous imagination; through the landscape – which after many disruptions has been shaped into a post-industrial environment; and through every dimension of the body, a living document that records the conflicts and transformations of our time. An exploration that delves into its roots to deconstruct and reconstruct them together with the artists of her young multidisciplinary company, AP&A (Andrea Peña & Artists), founded in 2014. The choreographer, a former dancer with Ballet BC and Ballet Jazz De Montréal, explains: “Death and resurrection are explored through my Colombian heritage, coloured by the historic nuances of this colonised country, as a source of resilience that is deconstructed from a queer, post-industrial and post-human lens”.

Co-produced by La Biennale di Venezia with Danse Danse, the Agora de la danse and the Teatro Mayor Julio Mario Santo Domingo, BOGOTÁ, is the second large-scale work created by Andrea Peña with and for her company, involving the dancers François Richard, Jean-Benoit Lebrecque, Frederique Rodier, Erin O’Loughlin, Charlie Prince, Nicholas Bellefleur, Jontae McCrory, Chi Long, Jo Laïny Trozzo-Mounet; the set designer Jonathan Saucier; the research fellow Helen Simard; the costume designer Polina Boltova. For the visual part Andrea Peña collaborates with the directors Bobby Leon and Kevin Calero and with photographer Lian Benoit. The cast is completed by Debbie Doe, who creates the music based on electronic soundscapes. “A radical and innovative proposal”, BOGOTÁ, says McGregor, “convinces in its brave and raw approach to new movement exploration and evolving hybrid forms”.