Before you see a dance performance, there is a thought structure, a connection to land, politics, climate, context; the final dance work is part of a whole – so said Australian curator Angela Conquet during the Forum, a new initiative that she has co-ordinated for this year’s Biennale de la Danse in Lyon. A counterweight to both the festival’s focus on performance and its Eurocentrism, the Forum aimed to create a more global space for sharing, for dialogue, for ways of being and approaches to movement. The guest curators and artists at the Forum – Angela Conquet and Marrugeku (Australia), Nayse Lopez and Original Bomber Crew (Brazil), Quito Tembe and Idio Chichava (Mozambique), River Lin and Fangas Nayaw (Taiwan), Angela Mattox and devynn emory (USA) – were there to share their respective realities which we were invited to engage with through dialogues, provocations, participatory experiences and creative offerings.
At first, I viewed the Forum as an interesting but secondary addition to the festival performances, but to my surprise the revealing and sometimes somber narratives I participated in during the Forum made an indelible impression on me, and have made me reflect upon my own heritage and sense of self ever since.
The Forum artists were all from colonised countries which has had a profound impact on their life experience: Australia, Brazil, Mozambique, the US and Taiwan all have indigenous peoples with complex histories that they are trying to unravel, make sense of and express through dance. Being from Ireland, which was colonised for 800 years by the British, I felt an unexpected affinity with these artists; their stories began to resonate within me and I began to question my fragile and sometimes non-existent relationship with my own country and ancestors. I have lived most of my adult life abroad. Now that I am back in Ireland, I have an annoying habit of starting sentences with ‘Well, the Irish tend to…’ as if I am not in any way connected to my own people.
The idea of ‘country’ and a person’s enduring connection to the land where you and your ancestors were born was the predominant theme of guest Australian company Marrugeku. Aborigine elder June Oscar spoke about being from the oldest continuous civilisation on earth. ‘I am the vessel – my mind and my body – the holder of stories since the time of creation,’ she said, as she explained the deep physical and spiritual connection the Aboriginal peoples have to the land they inhabit. As she talks, I remember that the Irish also have a deep connection to the land and nature. In the Irish language, there are 32 words for ‘field’ and 99 for ‘rain’.*
Idio Chichava from Mozambique asked: ‘What are we doing and for whom?’ He explained how some in the dance community in his country wanted to be part of a white Europe and wash away the differences, and ‘In the process, we leave behind our country, the fabric of who we are, the context.’ I begin to wonder if I left myself behind during my 30 years of living abroad. I question why I rejected the Irish language when I was at school.
Taiwanese curator River Lin urged us not to dismiss the importance of heritage, and spoke about ‘composting’ culture and history. I like this image of putting things down in layers, one over the other, giving them time to cohere and create a living mass of something nourishing and essential.
Towards the end, French philosopher, translator and artist Emma Bigé said that the dance studio is like a laboratory, erasing the environment, whitening the space, removing context. The Forum gave us all the opportunity to be in a virtual studio: express opinions, connect to ourselves and to others, and reflect on how we came to be who we are.
Even though the attendees at the Forum were overwhelmingly white Europeans, the clear outcome was a desire to make space for other voices, other cultures, other movement approaches in the world of contemporary dance – a general rejection of ‘the white gaze’ of westernised contemporary dance. In principle, at least.
‘You may open your senses to a different sense-ability, beyond what we already know… the opportunity to be changed by the other, as uncomfortable or unsettling as this may be. This is what we hope the Forum will do,’ Angela Conquet said at the outset. Personally, I am now longing to lie in a compost heap of my heritage, and bury myself in its stories.
*Thanks to the research of Manchán Magan who sadly passed away on 3/10/25