Hà Mais

Presentation

Alma Txina
Maputo - Mozambique

"Here\'s to all that\'s still to discover and everything we won\'t ever get the chance to know."

\'Txina\' means \'movement\' or \'dance\' in Xangana, the native language of the many young dancers that spend their free hours practising dance in the streets or in one of the many abandoned spaces of Maputo, the capital of Mozambique. Difficulties are many, but all of these dancers have one thing in common: they have lost their soul to dance.

Out of this wish to practice and develop dance grew a project that feeds into the work of the many independent dance companies that thrive in the city. In the spring of 2002, the Mozambican arts centre Culturarte and the Portuguese cultural association Danças na Cidade organised the international dance project "Alma Txina", in collaboration with the European network D�parts and the Belgian festival Africalia. The project combined training activities for the whole dance community and the creation of five short choreographies with a selected group of 16 dancers.

Five choreographers, all of them ex-students or teachers of the dance school P.A.R.T.S., collaborated in this project and resided for nearly two months in the Mozambican capital: Thomas Hauert (Switzerland), Isabelle Dekeyser (Belgium), Arco Renz (Germany), Riina Saastamoinen (Finland) and George Khumalo (South-Africa). They started out by teaching a two-week workshop for the local dance community and went on to create, each one of them, a short choreography with some of the students of each of these workshops.

The result of this experience in intercultural collaboration is the performance "alma txina", presenting five choreographies interpreted by 15 Mozambican dancers and live music. For the 2003 tour, every night only three of the five choreographies will be shown, always including \'Hà Mais\' by Thomas Hauert, and two of the other 4 choreographies, alternating.
"alma txina" premiered in Maputo in the Centro Cultural Franco-Mo�ambicano on June 14th and 15th 2002 and was afterwards performed in Portugal at the festival Dan�as na Cidade 2002 in Lisbon (25 and 26 June), in Porto (30 June) and in Viseu (5 and 6 July). It will have performances at the Kampnagel Theatre in Hamburg on 7 and 8 March and at Kaaitheater in Brussels on 14, 15, 18, 19 and 20 March 2003.

The project "alma txina" is an initiative of Dan�as na Cidade and part of the long-term exchange and training programme \'Dançar o que � Nosso\', initiated in 1998 and present in Maputo for the fourth consecutive year. For more information on this project, don\'t hesitate to contact Dan�as na Cidade.

Alma Txina

Published by Cristina Peres, Expresso on 2002-07-06

Alma Txina (...) is a highly interesting example of the encounter between so distant creative universes as are those from Western Europe and from sub-Saharan Africa. Without establishing any hierarchy in the acculturation process, it is as if these five choreographies witness, each one in its one way, the difficulties to stir the nature of the other. On one side, the nature of a certain type of formal construction, and, on the other, the nature of movement. At this point of refinement, the rebelliousness of both sides was almost completely revealed.

Hedendaagse dans uit Afrika

Published by De Financieel-Economische Tijd - Pieter T on 2003-03-12

Alma Txina is een voorstelling uit Maputo in Mozambique. Txina betekent beweging of dans in de moedertaal van de vele jonge dansers die hun dagen doorbrengen met dansoefeningen in Maputo. Het gemeenschappelijke kenmerk van al deze dansers is dat ze hun ziel, alma, verloren hebben aan de dans. Het Mozambikaanse kunstencentrum CulturArte zocht naar middelen om iets te doen met deze energie in de straten van Maputo, en deed daarvoor een beroep op Dan�as na Cidade uit Lissabon, hoofdstad van het vroegere moederland van deze ex-kolonie. Via een ommetje langs Departs en Africalia stapte ook PARTS, de Belgische opleiding voor choreografen verbonden aan Rosas, mee in de boot. Vijf choreografen die afstudeerden aan PARTS in Brussel werkten mee aan dit project. Thomas Hauert, Isabelle Dekeyser, Arco Renz, Riina Saastamoinen en George Khumalo resideerden gedurende twee maanden in de hoofdstad van Mozambique. Zij startten er met een workshop van twee weken met de lokale dansgemeenschap. Daarna ontwikkelden ze elk apart een korte voorstelling met enkele van de deelnemers aan deze workshops. Bij de voorstellingen in Europa van deze werken worden elke avond drie van de vijf werken getoond. Ha mais van Thomas Hauert hoort daar steeds bij, en verder krijg je telkens twee van de vier andere stukken te zien.

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