Mexico City Tour Spain residency with Iratxe Ansa

During 2016 my project is to go to Mexico City and San Sebastian, Spain from May until July. I will be working with a multicultural collective headed by contemporary dancer & choreographer Iratxe Ansa from Spain. In 2015 I completed a residency in Mexico City with Iratxe for one performance at CENART. Following the success of last years performance at CENART in Coyoacan, Iratxe has been offered by festivals to perform and tour the work in 2016. Myself and a select few dancers who were in the 2015 production have been invited to tour the show in Mexico. The dance institute CENART were so pleased with our performance in 2015 that they are willing to cover accommodation and pay the dancers while producing the project for touring.

Over the period of 3 weeks in July 2016 Iratxe will be holding another residency, this time in San Sebastian, Spain. The residency will be attended by enthusiasts of her style and professional dancers from around the world. From my knowledge I will be the only person from New Zealand attending this residency. During this process I will collaborate with the most important and exciting partners the city has to offer. The residency and final performance will be held in the Victoria Eugenia Theatre (most beautiful and historical theatre of the city). The Tabakalera building in San Sebastian is dedicated to the contemporary creation, specifically focused on Cinema and video among the rest. They will be the ones hosting us during our video projects together. The encounter will be at the main Museum of the city (San Telmo).

The outcome of this project will be to gain New Zealand success. I will create a closer relationship with the choreographer which will produce more performance opportunities and employment in the future. Through the training and performance experiences I am going to be a more experienced teacher and will have acquired skills which I can bring back to New Zealand to expand contemporary and hip hop fusion. My mission is to be able to dance New Zealandly and constantly tour in a full time collective. 

My short term goal which benefits community arts participation is to teach 10-18 year old hip hop students in New Zealand. In New Zealand, in my view, there is a big gap between hip hop dance and contemporary dance. Dancers and choreographers from both scenes do not regularly attend each others shows. I see the potential for me to bridge the gap by taking improvisation, ballet and performance techniques into the hip hop class. This will encourage hip hop dancers to think and move in a way which is not conventional to them. Everybody who does hip hop is worried about looking cool all of the time. Contemporary is seen as something that is strange by the majority of the hip hop community and is not completely understood. The improvisation, ballet and performance techniques which they learn will support them to be more interesting performers and encourage them to be more accepting of contemporary art culture.