Sorrow Swag
Performance
by
Ligia Lewis
In the frame of 9. Tanznacht Berlin 2016
“Sorrow Swag” works to develop a language of sadness and, in doing so, unravels a powerful space for image and sound. The body gives evidence to suppressed anger, the voice of resistance. Employing motifs and texts from theater classics, such as “Antigone” by Anouilh or “Not I” by Beckett, Lewis scrutinizes the canonical practices of racial and gender attribution and juxtaposes a society striving for happiness against the anatomy of melancholy, pulling into focus the other.
Concept/Choreography: Ligia Lewis | Performance: Andrew Hardwidge | Sound: Twin Shadow Originally performed by Brian Getnick | A production by Ligia Lewis | Funded by the Governing Mayor of Berlin – Senate Chancellery – Cultural Affairs. With support from Human Resources Los Angeles, ada Studio Berlin and Pieter Space (Los Angeles).
Ligia Lewis
Liga Lewis is a choreographer and dancer based in Berlin. Lewis weaves together critical and literary texts with dance and theater as she interrogates the metaphors and social inscriptions of the body. She engages with the choreographic through embodied, sensorial, and immersive performances, with a predilection towards interiority and abstraction. Her choreographies can be described as experientially rich and complex. Lewis has shared her work in multiple contexts including visual arts and theater. As a dancer, Lewis has performed extensively across Europe and abroad in theater, dance and film productions including: with choreographers Eszter Salamon, Mette Ingvartsen, Jeremy Wade, and Kat Válastur; theater director Ariel Efraim Ashbel; artist Wojciech Kosma; and in films by Wu Tsang and Uli Edel. Lewis was awarded the Prix Jardin d’Europe for her work “Sorrow Swag“ at Impulstanz Festival in Vienna 2015. “minor matter,“ for the theater, is her latest creation in development, which will premiere in the fall at HAU Hebbel-am-Ufer.