Choreographing Transmission

Circles, fractals, spirals, dots, pauses, tension, temperature, lines, levels, and layers incessantly dialogue within a gesture. Minimal matter that is able to expand, collide, fission, and fuse fictionalize the space. Any dance, no matter how subtle, contains this transformational energy, and this tiny unit becomes the ground zero of choreography, the point of affection and mystery.

Choreographing Transmission is an open rehearsal by Amant resident artist and choreographer Ana Pi, exceptionally accompanied by New York dancers Morgan Gregory, Noel Olson, and Sarah Boyd. Together they will perform the first prototype for Atomic Joy, as part of Ana’s current research at Amant. Choreographing Transmission will feature a few songs from the album Big Sun by the experimental French pianist, composer, and arranger Christophe Chassol, which are among the tools for this laboratory. Alongside each other, we will publicly observe the instant in which, through transpiration and entanglement, one’s movement is transferred, multiplied, and also transmuted.

For Your Reference is a series of events that spotlights our current artists in residence and gives them a platform to share ongoing conversations, research, and references.

About the artist

Ana Pi, a Brazilian-born, Paris-based extemporary choreographer creates from the regenerative layers of African-Diasporic dance and imagery. Her work investigates movements and gestures that have been passed down through traditions and mutated as they traversed different landscapes and bodies.

Her recent work includes the 2018 documentary NoirBLUE - Les déplacements d’une danse (2018). Filmed in nine African countries, the documentary examines themes of ancestry, displacement, and belonging. Then, in 2021, she received a MoMA and Cisneros Institute fellowship for the project The Divine Cypher, a dance that revisits the work of Katherine Dunham and Maya Deren, who studied Haitian Voudoun culture through dance. For the 35th São Paulo Biennial in 2023, she presented ANTENA IA MBAMBE, a 23-foot-tall kinetic installation in collaboration with Taata Kwa Nkisi Mutá Imê, which blends materials and movements in dialogue with Tempo, a divinity in Brazilian Candomblé. That same year, she choreographed ALGORITHM OCEAN TRUE BLOOD MOVES, a performance directed by Julien Creuzet for the Performa Biennial in New York. Currently, Ana Pi is working on her next stage piece, Atomic Joy, for eight dancers, produced by NA MATA LAB.

Host or Publisher Amant Foundation