Creative Culture Talk on Dance and the Slavery Past:
Farida Nabibaks’ ANNA
How can dance make emotions about the slavery past known and discussable? Farida Nabibaks’ performance Radiant Shadow tries to do just that. It revolves around the necessity to delve into our colonial history, and explores how its legacies endure in the present, in material and immaterial, conscious and unconscious ways.
ANNA
Little is known about Anna, who lived in Arnhem in the 18th Century. She was born in slavery on the Vossenburg plantation in Suriname. The owner was a Dutchman from Arnhem. When he died, Anna accompanied his two daughters, almost her own age, from Suriname to their new home in Arnhem. Her life was spent in obscurity. But she must have been a spectacle being a black woman. Who was she? How was she treated, and how did she feel? In ANNA, the second part of Radiant Shadow, Nabibaks explores these questions.
Legacies of slavery & dance performance: a multi-dimensional experience
We all live in the wake of colonialism and slavery. Their legacies continue to manifest themselves in institutions, material culture, white privileges, racial trauma, post-traumatic slave syndrome; in our bodies and in our minds. How can dance transmit this embodied, incorporated knowledge about being “in the wake” of 18th-century Anna? In Farida Nabibaks’ performance, the emotions speak, and the heart is touched. We are invited to listen to our bodies and tune into our own feelings, and those of others. What do you feel as you watch ANNA? And are these feelings something you can translate into words?
In this Creative Culture Talk devoted to Dance and the Slavery Past, we will be introduced to Farida Nabibaks’ project Radiant Shadow, which emerged from historical research currently being done on traces of the colonial and slavery past in the Province of Gelderland. Following a brief fragment from ANNA, Stephanie Afrifa and Farida Nabibaks will discuss the performance, dance, and the slavery past, first among themselves, then with you.
Speakers
The evening will be hosted by Stephanie Afrifa, a cultural innovator based in The Netherlands. Stephanie Afrifa holds a BA in cultural studies from Radboud University.
It revolves around ANNA, a performance by Farida Nabibaks, who graduated from the Scapino Dance Academy in Amsterdam and also studied Philosophy at Radboud University.
ANNA will be performed by Lana Renfrum, Saron Tesfahuney and Farida Nabibaks.
The evening is introduced by Liedeke Plate, Professor of Culture and Inclusivity at Radboud University and leader of the research project Feeling the Traces of the Colonial Past.
Radiant Shadow, of which ANNA is a part, is produced by Reframing HERstory Art Foundation. With this work the Foundation aims to contribute to the dialogue concerning the legacies of slavery and colonialism in the present.