WAR (A War Dance) 

The choreographic starting material for WAR are Polynesian dance forms that were reconstructed and developed on Easter Island during the 1980s and 1990s – among others Hoko, a famous war dance of the Rapa Nui. In an environment influenced by tourism, these “traditional” dance forms are both identity forming and survival strategies. With WAR, the division of art into contemporary vs traditional is addressed as a continuation of colonial relationships. Amanda Piña and Daniel Zimmermann use the Rapa Nui repertoire to transfer the motif of war to a global level. WAR is a danced manifesto about the advancing homogenisation of art and the world that stands for other oppressed, changed and lost perspectives. With a “post-exotic” approach, a connection is made between aggressive expansionist politics and the question of the potential resistance of the body.