20 Jahre Radialsystem: UNEXPECTED LESSON 4 – Decolonizing the Body in Dance

In “Decolonizing the Body in Dance,” which we present as part of “20 Years of Radialsystem,” movement becomes a practice of reconnection and an act of resistance and resilience.

What are we talking about when we talk about the body (or bodies)? Contemporary artistic approaches challenge the supposedly “neutral” body of Western dance traditions and reveal that it is historically and culturally shaped.

In Indigenous and non-Western knowledge systems, the body is often not a malleable object, but a carrier of memory, relationship, and meaning.

The practices of Dr. Rajyashree Ramesh, Martha Hincapié Charry, and Sage Ni‘Ja Whitson open up different perspectives:

In the lecture performance “The Cosmic Body,” Ramesh understands the body as part of cosmic orders; in “Amazonia 2040,” Hincapié Charry conceives of it as an eco-feminist territory in which (de-)colonial and ecological questions are inscribed; In the performance “On Unarriving,” Whitson approaches dark matter and dark energy as sacred and cosmic technology.