Ana Pi, NoirBLUE – les déplacements d’une danse, 27′, Brazil, 2018

“The ethnographic gaze that can sometimes flatten the spirituality or ritual of what’s filmed” says Ana Pi, whose filmic and choreographic work operates at the antipodes of a distant gazing capture, and navigates different strata of reality and time infused by the richness and legacies of Afro-Diasporic ancestralities. NoirBLUE–les déplacements d’une danse evokes Pi’s journey through multiple destinations in Africa, to “reconnect with her origins through the choreographic gesture…. In this dance of fertility and healing, the black skin under the blue veil is integrated with space, reenacting new forms and colors that evoke ancestry, belonging, resistance and the sense of freedom”. These ideas are also at the core of the choreographer, researcher and filmmaker most recent research The Divine Cypher and the film Another Anagram of Ideas, on the legacies of Katherine Dunham and Maya Deren. Awarded the 2020 Cisneros Institute and MOMA Artist Research Fellowship, this project delves into archives documenting the presence of Dunham and Deren in Haiti, and connecting them with Ana Pi’s own Candomblé spirituality, to build an “undersea passage between divine realities, Afro-Atlantic histories, and ancestrality”.

NoirBLUE and Another Anagram of Ideas will be presented by Ana Pi herself, and will be followed by a conversation on the artist’s overall body of work in dance, film, and visual art, moderated by Onyeka Igwe and Rachael Rakes.

Biography

Ani Pi uses choreographic gestures to explore her African heritage in a time-space experiment that blends traditional and modern dance. This dance, evoking themes of fertility and healing, seeks to reimagine notions of ancestry, belonging, resistance, and freedom.

Ana Pi is a choreographer and imagery artist, born in Brazil and based in France. The artist develops a researcher of Afro-Diasporic and Urban dances, acts as extemporary dancer and pedagogue, her practices are woven through the act of traveling. Her transdisciplinary works are particularly situated between the notions of transit, displacement, belonging, superposition, memory, colors and ordinary gestures.

Her dances, films and research have been programmed in institutional spaces such as MoMA, Cisneros Institute, Center Pompidou, Fondation Cartier, Museo Reina Sofia, Museu INHOTIM, Rotterdam International Film Festival, Festival d’Automne Paris, among others. The Divine Cypher, RAW ON, Fumaça, Meditation on Beauty, èscultura, O BΔNQUETE, COROA, NoirBLUE, DRW2 et Le Tour du Monde des Danses Urbaines en 10 villes are her works that articulate choreography, discourse and installation. Audiovisual productions are highlighted by NoirBLUE – les déplacements d’une danse (2018 – 27′), her first international award-winning documentary, and the essays Another Anagram of Ideas (2022-10’07) and VÓS (2011 – 5′ 30 ).

Since 2010, she has been developing and sharing the practice named STEADY BODY; peripheral dances, sacred gestures, and in 2020, she creates the structure NA MATA LAB for artistic production and collaboration. In 2023, commissioned by the 35th São Paulo Biennial she exhibited her first kinetic installation ANTENA IA MBAMBE – Mimenekenu Ê Lá Tempo!, created in collaboration with Taata Kwa Nkisi Mutá Imê, a supreme priest of the Brazilian Candomblé. And with Julien Creuzet, she signed the choreography of ALGORITHM OCEAN TRUE BLOOD MOVES, the large-scale performance created by the visual artist and poet, commissioned both by the Performa Biennial and the Hartwig Foundation. Presented last november in New York City, this performance feature 7 young dancers from Alvin Ailey School and the singer Malou Beauvoir.