Bridging Steps

For this residency and research project, performers from Dakar meet with dancers from all over North Rhine-Westphalia in traditional dance workshops, sharing formats, trainings, and panel events. Together, they will collaborate on a performance intended for the Düsseldorf city space and tanzhaus nrw. The starting point for this international gathering, testing out new transnational alliances and post-colonial cooperation, will be the cypher as a fundamental learning structure in hip hop culture.
Over the last one-and-a half years, all-female collective Hood of Sisters have been organising events to promote an understanding of dance and street cultures, actively engaging in antiracist awareness activities throughout North Rhine-Westphalia, engendering a new consciousness for community. The Bridging Steps project connects international dance scenes between Europe and Africa, opening travel routes in both directions. In the field of dance, Bridging Steps, as a cooperation between the Hood of Sisters collective and the Dakar-based SAMA STREET VIBE organisation, enables eye level exchange, tying into current debates on ecological sustainability within the international dance scene and a decolonialised perspective on exchange, network, and participation processes between Europe and Africa.
tanzhaus nrw supports the project as a cooperation partner, providing a space for training together, and it issues the invitation to a joint performance and the panel discussion with the following jam session. The panel discussion will debate the meaning of the cypher in West African traditional arts, its practice and codes as well as its influence on Europe’s urban dance scene. This focusses on similarities and differences as well as on the origins of both cultures. The panel discussion aims to shape an awareness for the value of cultural alliances.

Hood of Sisters are Daria Nazarenko, Nasrin Torabi, Lisa Jones, Waithera Schreyeck, Diana Schöne and Ange Marie Rose Van der Vegt. The SAMA STREET VIBE organisational team are Daniel Bertrand Maloum Faye, Moise Daouda Fall, Veronica Dulce Semedo Tavarez, Ndeye Fatou Faye, Mamadou Lamarana Barry, and Arama Seybiya Gomis.