A Place to Dance

A Place to Dance is a dance piece born from the encounter between Brazilian dancer and choreographer Poliana Lima and British flamenco dance artist Yinka Esi Graves. At the heart of this encounter lies the desire to present the body in its collective dimension and to position dance as a powerful agent for creating and transforming spaces.
Graves and Lima, with their diverse cultural heritages, articulate their choreographic discourse through dialogue and rhythmic play, in which rhythm is recognized as an ancestral, non-hegemonic technology. A Place to Dance is an opening in space and time that invites us to participate in dance's potential to transform any place into a place to dance, a place to belong. A Place to Dance is an act that invites the audience to participate by dancing and to watch others dance. Creating a permeability between participation and observation, everything unfolds on a four-way stage. Dancers, audience, musicians, and technicians share the same space. Lima and Graves develop their choreography through a rhythmic dialogue, in which the sounds of their bodies are recorded live and edited, creating a constantly evolving and mutating soundtrack. DJ Oumoukala opens and closes the 1 hour 45 minute performance. This presence underscores the two creators' interest in experiencing the body in its collective dimension.

Poliana Lima, based in Madrid, creates simple yet profound stage poetics that connect with audiences, exploring identity, memory, and learning. Yinka Esi Graves, a flamenco artist based in Seville, investigates bridges between flamenco other forms of bodily expression, particularly from a contemporary and African diaspora perspective, and has danced with artists such as Remedios Amaya and Concha Buika.