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View full video here: Human River (flow 1)
Water Locale
Lagos Port, Lagos Lagoon, Atlantic Ocean
Audience Location
Freedom Park
Broad Street
Lagos Island, Lagos
Time
4PM
History
“Lagos: the first true mega-city in sub-Saharan Africa, home to between 9 million and 17 million people, depending on where you draw the lines and who’s doing the counting. With an estimated 3,000 more people arriving every day, Lagos is one of the fastest growing cities on the planet. Yet it is set on an infrastructure that was meant for a far, far smaller place. As a result, everything here seems supersized. The traffic jams are tighter than anywhere else, the water far more polluted, the poverty more glaring. “ (Adapted from: “In the markets of the meta city,” by Robert Neuwirth.)”
Lagos is a port city on the Atlantic coast of Africa. An important international trading center, Lagos developed on low-lying islands separated by creeks that fringe the mouth of Lagos Lagoon. The city’s harbor is protected from the Atlantic Ocean by Victoria Island and Bar Beach. The Marina on Lagos Island is part port, part street market, part skyscraper downtown, Marina is a busy area full of traffic, workers, shoppers, schools, banks, churches, and, of course, boats and other maritime uses. Lagos Island was the site of the original settlement of Eko and is still the historic center of the city.
Watch a video giving a taste of Lagos
The Choreographers
The Project is a collaboration between Andrea Haenggi, a New York director/choreographer and Certified Movement Analyst and members of the Society for Performing Arts in Nigeria (SPAN). Haenggi, the project leader, will collaborate with 12 professional Nigerian dance artists and approximately 40 youths living around the public performance area to create the performance work “A Piece of the Action.” The work will be developed through an intensive 5-day workshop, and will be performed as part of the Global Water Dances Initiative “Dancing for Safe Water Everywhere.” The 12 local dance artists are engaged in a multi-layered way—each of them working as choreographer, researcher, student, teacher, coach. The idea is to become aware of the movements and conventions that are at play in the economic/social space of Marina on Lagos Island in relation to the notion of “water”.
We will develop the movement vocabulary through delving into the many facets of the notion of ”water” — from the fact that “your body can’t survive one week without water” to “the physical sensation of being in the water” to the question “is there a human right to water?” In the creation of performance work the public place at Marina on Lagos Island will function not as a stage but rather as a place we inhabit, influence and learn from, and we will use the information and influence gathered from the location as choreographic material. To enhance movement awareness in the local dance artists and youth, the creation process is supported through the methods of the Bartenieff Fundamentals to improve movement efficiency and body connectivity. To work, create and come to a final result in this short period of less than a week is only possible because a detailed work plan/scenario is constructed beforehand, where each Nigerian dance artist and each of the young people involved is already committed to the project and involved before the final week of meeting together.
The Music
In the first half of the performance, Olufunmi Olajoyebe will sing live, bringing her own unique style of gospel, sung in her native Yoruba language and English, to the work. For the second half, the performance will join with dancers the world over to use the sound score that has been designed specially for the Global Water Dance festival.
The Performance
Dancers will take over the space from the market place to the roofs of boats at the shore. Invited spectators will be stationed at a specific location, where the dance starts, and, of course, accidental viewers will glimpse parts of it from the market, the boats, the bus, the store windows along the route, allowing everyday passersby to be part of the choreography (and thus everyone will have “A piece of the Action’- Dancing for Safe Water)
Email contact
How Can I Find Out More?
You can contact either SPAN Artistic Director Ice Nweke: [email protected] or Project leader Andrea Haenggi: [email protected]
How Can I get involved?
We would appreciate help with: Creating posters for the event, Video recording, Photographing, Invite/organize audience and participants.
You can contact either SPAN Artistic Director Ice Nweke: [email protected] or Project leader Andrea Haenggi: [email protected]
Directions to Site Location
The exact audience meeting point will be determine later in the process