Presented with PuSh International Performing Arts Festival

BOGOTÁ

Andrea Peña & Artists (Montréal)

January 31 + February 1, 2025 | 8pm 
Vancouver Playhouse (600 Hamilton St, Vancouver)
Tickets on sale November 20. 

BOGOTÁ is a work inspired by Bogotá, but is not about Bogotá per se. This new universe fashioned by AP&A is steeped in the political, historic and cultural nuances of artistic director Andrea Peña’s Colombian heritage and manifested as a post-Andean Baroque, performative event.

Featuring 9 performers, the work is a contemplation on death and resurrection, moving beyond a traditional or linear definition of death, focusing instead on spiritual, corporal, societal and cultural transformations ever present in the landscape of Bogotá City (The Lady of the shining mountain). Exposed within a dry and brutalist design universe, bodies and materials become political landscapes who undergo voluntary processes of transformation and rupture. Through evolving stages of rebirth and resurrection, this is a tribute to the resistance of people’s resurfacing within the post-colonial era. With a theatrical vivacity that is typical of the baroque (gilt and grotesque), BOGOTÁ queers death in a way that questions our post-human capacity, awareness and resilience.

In this contemporary landscape, mutations of ancient mythology, magical realism, and baroque architecture mesh to create an alternative world where the queer body, Colombian political heritage and the post-industrial, post-colonial worlds come together, channeled through a raw, aesthetic and physical experience of design and brutality. Visceral, transgressive and magnetic BOGOTÁ is a chaos and resurrection you want to taste.

 

A Note from the Choreographer

"We humbly invite you into our complex and multi-layered universe where long time collaborators of AP&A, and above all profoundly special human beings, courageously confront and undergo inner transformations of their own internal archetypes. As a Colombian immigrant it is an honor to share with you this work so close to my heritage and my land; incarnated by non-Colombian artists who commit their vulnerable humanity as an offering to the resilience and emancipation of many communities within our post-colonial era. BOGOTÁ, in its pluriversality, hopes to resurrect universal sentiments that touch on our capacity to be altered, to be forever changed by transformative mutations of ourselves. We offer a space for the sacred and the profane to co-exist through the pain and celebration of what it means to be human. We invite you to embark and surrender into this ecosystem, as a co-participant in the journey of the present." - Andrea Peña

Cast + Collaborators Credits

Artistic Direction: Andrea Peña

Choreography: Andrea Peña in collaboration with the artists

Interpreters: Nicholas Bellefleur, Charlie Prince, Jo Laïny Trozzo-Mounet, Jean-Benoît Labrecque, Jontae McCrory, Erin O’loughlin, Francois Richard, Frédérique Rodier, Chi Long

Lighting Design: Hugo Dalphond

Sound Composition: Debbie Doe

Dramaturgy: Angelique Willkie 

Artistic Advisor: Helen Simard

Costumes: Jonathan Saucier and Polina Boltova 

Scenography: Jonathan Saucier and Andrea Peña

Stage Manager: Conrad St-Gelais

Visuals: Bobby Leon, Felix Godbout Delavaud, Antoine Ryan / Kevin Calero, Andrea Peña

Graphic Design: Rico Rica

Producers: Polina Boltova and Isaïe Richard

Tour Manager: Isaïe Richard


Co-producers:
Agora de la Danse, Danse Danse, International Festival of Contemporary Dance: La Biennale di Venezia

Agent de développement: Mickaël Spinnhirny, Agence Mickaël Spinnhirny

Andrea Peña & Artists have received support from: International Festival of Contemporary Dance: La Biennale di Venezia, Agora de la Danse, Conseil des arts du Canada, Conseil Des Arts et Lettres du Québec, Conseil des Arts de Montréal, Danse Danse, Maison de la Culture Notre Dame de Grace. 

Photos: Direction & Photography by Kevin Calero, Antoine Ryan.