In November last year, Naomi paid a visit to Mozambique for the Biennale de la Danse en Afrique, hosted by our newest agora partner Kinani Dance Platform in Maputo. Across a busy week she experienced the incredible work of choreographers from right across the African continent, which took place in traditional venues, found spaces – including an abandoned multi-story car park – and in Ngalanga, a neighbourhood on the edge of the city. Here, as Naomi and the audience made their way to the public space where the performances were due to take place, children from surrounding streets, curious to find out what was happening, joined them, and subsequently became transfixed by what they saw.
One of the artists taking part was Idio Chichava, a dancer, choreographer and artistic director of Mozambique’s Converge+ Dance Company. After a successful career in France, Idio returned to his home country and began working actively to promote creative exchange, free dance education for local communities, and the presentation of performances in public spaces. It was thanks to his initiative that a whole day of performances took place in Ngalanga where he’d been working with local communities, hosting dance workshops and events. As a result of this experience Idio created a brand new work, Vagabundus.
The growing movement agora has nurtured since 2021 is robustly founded on the principles of co-ownership and co-creation. Over the course of our many gatherings we’ve imagined new ways of doing things and out of these discussions has emerged a desire to create South-South global links.
So here we are in February 2024, preparing for agora’s first South-South residency which will start on 1st March with Idio, accompanied by his producer Silvana Pombal, travelling to Buenos Aires to work with Juan Onofri Barbato at Planta. Together, Planta and Kinani will co-lead and co-steer other South-South initiatives between Latin America and the African Continent, and needless to say, we’re very excited and curious to see what will emerge. Naomi’s own personal experience – and her great privilege – of spending time with our partners in many different contexts around the world, is that she – we – have so much to learn, not just about making art but how to live together. Idio is an artist who can show us how it’s done.
Agora is determined to do things differently and shine a light on artists who are working in regions which rarely get the attention they deserve on the global stage. Neither do they have regular or dependable access to the resources artists in Europe can sometimes take for granted; the fight for financial support is even more challenging and access to basic requirements for rehearsals and performance are precarious.
In the words of Tamara Cubas, an artist in our network based in Montevideo:“Because the economic centres are in the [Global] North, South-American artists have a relationship which is always North / South… We believe it is important to shift those connecting lines that are always with Europe and create new ones which connect South-South: Latin America and Africa. Both continents have a colonial past in common and so there are ways of living and of knowledge-making that can be exchanged.”
This is what drives us. Creating a movement for the future which can provide not just a platform, but reliable sustenance and the resources for more of these important residencies to take place, so that we, and society as a whole, can be enriched by them.
Images © Mariano Silva; Naomi Russell
