Vanessa Vargas
DANCER | JOURNALIST | DANCE EDUCATOR | RESEARCHER
dance and memory
Dance and memory
Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú
April 22 to may 4. 2016
Lima, Perú.
Facilitators: Vanessa Vargas/Ana Elena Brito
The body is always the place where experience resides. However, experience is also an act of the body itself - not only because we can undo the classic Cartesian relationship between body and soul, but also because we understand that muscle memory is related to our memories and thoughts. In this sense, this workshop aims to activate in the dancers the body memory in a poetic exchange between its body and the psychic memory (the memory as habit and the memory as a memory) through different activities that will lead to the creation of A choreography, but also a theoretical reflection on the use of memory in the reconstruction of individual and collective history. In this workshop we will develop different activities related to the body and that are connected with other disciplines such as poetry, urban design, dance, architecture, history, photography, cinema, sound art, etc. The workshop will not be exclusively practical: we will also approach the memory from a theoretical framework in which we will study the ways of understanding it, developing a written material that works as a conceptual support and allows to offer a theoretical contribution around dance and memory, In which we can think of the latter from the body, in contemporary dance and performance.
"El viaje" is the result of the workshop "Dance and urban memory", which was held in the Department of Dance Studies at the Pontificia Universidad Católica of Perú, taught by Vanessa Vargas and Ana Elena Brito, Venezuelan contemporary dancers and teachers who live in Lima and New York, respectively, developing their artistic practice. This workshop was conducted with the support of both the Department of Performance Studies at Tisch School of the Arts of New York University and the department of dance of the the Dance School of Performing Arts of the Pontificia Universidad Católica of Perú, especially Luis Peirano Falconi, Dean of the Faculty of Performing Arts, Mirella Carbone Dagnino, Coordinator of the Specialty of Dance and Director of the School of Contemporary Dance, and all the teachers and students who took part in this project.
