Served as Latin American dance films program curator at Carlow Arts Festival 2021.
Carlow Arts Festival, directed by Jo Mangan, is a vibrant multi-disciplinary festival built on a deep belief in creating space for discovery, delight and disruption. The programme embraces the world of virtuosic artists to resonate, inspire and collaborate with the festival community. They champion the need for audiences to experience transformative art, to encounter diverse perspectives, and through participation to be included in the act of discovery. The surprise of a profound or joyous response as part of an immersive festival experience is what we want to offer to everyone.
From documentary to fiction, this dance film programme represents a slice of the expansive creativity that condenses a colonised, mestizx, globally ascendant, migrant, contradictory, corrupt and extremely happy land: America (Latina) – (Latin) America. Dance as an ancestral connection, as an engine of vitality and sanction, as a universal language and dissidence at the same time, as a way to meet again with the purest and most inexplicable, is part of our belonging to this present, past and future spaces.
Films include Un Día Caza (by Alejo Moguillansky and Grupo Krapp), La Fuerza (dance in spite of the body’s challenges,), Dancehall Weather (a collaboration between the acclaimed artist Cecilia Bengolea and the creative power of Jamaican Dancehall dancers), September days (dance as a life remembering game), SETe (a work of Gentlemen de Rua discussing masculinity and kindness), Desnudamento Público das Paixões (mini-choreographies of passions behind the screen), About Questions, Shames and Scars (reflects on how questioning about racism can be harsh, and sometimes as oppressive as racism itself when you demand someone to speak) and Diablitas, Diablitos y Almitas. Danzando la vida y la muerte (a group of children learn their ancestral dances and reflect on their complex and diverse current society).