O B∆NQUETE began with another Banquet: the one depicted in Plato’s Symposium,  in the fourth century BC. In this text, the Greek philosopher depicts a  group of men engaged in a dialogue on the definition of love. In 2019,  at the invitation of Associação Videobrasil, Brazilian choreographer Ana  Pi imagined her own dialogue on this theme, inviting her paternal aunt,  Mylia Mary, to join her on stage. In Brazil, Mylia Mary is a cook and  former Samba passista. They are joined by another accomplice,  the philosophy teacher Maria Fernanda Novo, and then Ana Pi literally  gets cooking. For the duration of this piece, the kitchen – an intimate  sphere – becomes a theatre of discussions between these three black  women on their history and their territories. In O B∆NQUETE, food and choreography become one, to speak of heritage, resistance and emotion.

(Source: programme of the CND)

Choreographic  and imagery artist, researcher in urban dances, contemporary dancer and  pedagogue. Her practice is situated among notions of transit,  displacement, belonging, overlaping, memory, colors, and ordinary  gestures.

In 2018 she creates  COROA, the performance and installation for  the Galeria Vermelho – São Paulo, also presented in Lafayettes  Anticipations – Paris, at this same year she is awarded with the  “Revelation Prize” by the Cooperativa Paulista de Dança – São Paulo. In 2017 she creates NoirBLUE, a solo work for stage played in France, Portugal and Belgium, and also the Périphérie & Périphériques Project in collaboration with Lá da Favelinha – cultural center, where she is a partner for the dance.  In 2015 she creates DRW2 for the Instituto Inhotim and in 2014 she creates Le Tour du Monde des Danses Urbaines,  a project for the CDCN in France, with those interactive lectures she  have been performing in Brazil, in Europe and in Africa as well.   Besides those main projects she develops the practice CORPO FIRME; danças periféricas, gestos sagrados and collaborates with many artists in works of diverse natures and durations.

NoirBLUE – les déplacements d’une danse  (2018 – 27′) is her first documentary, awarded by FestCURTAS in Belo  Horizonte, Janela de Cinema in Recife, as winner of the brazilian  short-film competition in both festivals. Official selection for the  Fórum.Doc in Belo Horizonte, also for the Semana de Realizadores in  2018, then at Tiradentes Film Festival and International Film Festival  Rotterdam in 2019.

Brazil,  France, Turkey, Belgium, Portugal, Spain, Germany, Switzerland,  Austria, Italy, Poland, Romania, Japan, Peru, United States, Martinique,  Reunion Island, Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali, Nigeria, Angola, Equatorial  Guinea, Côte d’Ivoire and Mauritania are the countries where she has  been crossing her professional experience, through programs of artistic  residency, giving workshops on body, image, sacred gestures &  periphery, or within the programming of international festivals as  performer and tours of her work.

Source: Website of the artist

More information: https://anazpi.com/

Since 2001, the National Center for Dance (CND) has been making recordings of its shows and educational programming and has created resources from these filmed performances (interviews, danced conferences, meetings with artists, demonstrations, major lessons, symposia specialized, thematic arrangements, etc.).