Weaving lasting ties between the Swiss and Colombian Dance Scenes

It dates back to 2022, when Juan Pablo López, the biennial’s artistic director, was part of the South American delegation for the Swiss Dance Days programme. He was looking for works that could forge lasting ties with the event and the Colombian scene. “I wasn’t only interested in having performances, but also in a dialogue between the artists and the community,” he said in an interview. 

This first contact, carried out in partnership with Pro Helvetia, then led to a special program during the 6th edition of Cali International Dance Biennial. The event, carried out in 2023, counted with a focus comprised of four shows and one exhibition of artists from the contemporary Swiss dance scene: Ruth Childs (‘Fantasia’), Beaver Dam Company (‘Yumé’), Antipode Danse Tanz (‘A Journey of Moving Grounds’), Cie Linga (‘Flow’), and Céline Burnand (premiering the video installation ‘Figuras de la Memoria’). 

As is customary in the biennial’s program, there is a thread that runs from one edition to the next. “We always have three or four artists that we connect from one biennial to the next. In other words, we try to bring them before the event so that they can work with the community, then they spend between five and ten days here, in workshops, resulting in a final work or not. The purpose is not to have a piece, but a dialogue beforehand,” explained Juan Pablo. 

The focus in 2023 then paved the way for another edition. In 2025, two companies returned to Cali, revisiting what had taken place two years earlier. 

Cie Linga re-enacted ‘Flow’, a show inspired but animal group movements, but not in the way they had done before. They now partnered with the Colombian dance company Incolballet to recreate the piece with local dancers. ‘It’s a pleasure to be here and to see how our work also can be adapted to other companies and other kind of bodies,’ said during the event Marco Cantalupo, Linga’s choreographer and artistic director alongside Katarzyna Gdaniec.

Also returning to Colombia was Antipode Danse Tanz, with a work triggered by their visit to South America two years back. When touring the region (including the Cali Biennial) in 2023 with ‘A Journey of Moving Grounds’, they saw in the local architecture the spark for a new piece. 

As Nicole Morel, the group’s director, explained in an interview at the time: ‘I found this cultural centre in Bogota, Gabriel García Márquez, with circles and bricks. Then we got to Brazil and bricks were everywhere, even on high buildings. The Municipal Theatre has bricks on the stage, on the walls. Favelas are made out of bricks. In Colombia, we found these tall buildings (Torres del Parque, by architect Rogelio Salmona) with the Plaza de Toros right next to it, all in bricks. It’s a material that is very, very present here. It opened the door for us. Somehow, the way it’s used is much more creative than in Europe. It’s so rich.’ 

Thus, was born ‘BRICKS – Chorale for bricks and bodies’, a transdisciplinary work where dance, music and architecture meet through the materiality of bricks. The piece is a co-creation project between Antipode and Colombian musician and sound artist Violeta Cruz, that premiere in Switzerland then toured Colombia, following the thread traced in Cali.