Once a year, BAU and Dancing on the Edge team up to host the BAU AIR DOTE. This residency provides four weeks of time and space for a performing artist, whose work resonates with both BAU and DOTE, to dive deeper into their artistic practice and research without the pressure of producing a finished piece of work. BAU and DOTE find their common spark in the belief that performing artists should be able to be and think freely in the pursuit of their artistic goals. Moving between different borders, bodies, histories and (pre)conceptions.
Healing is communal, healing is spiritual, healing is in the body and in spaces in between, healing is to be in harmony with plants and nature. “What do you feel when you think about the spiritual power of plants and ancestry?”
With plant spirits, artists-in-community Anima Jhagroe-Ruissen, Farah Rahman, Shaymaa Shoukry, Ahmad Saleh, Natasja van ‘t Westende, Agnes Matthews (and others from varied communities), Fazle Shairmahomed is researching a collective artwork in the form of ritual in this BAU AIR DOTE residency.
Fazle developed a new focus in their long-term artistic research into the spiritual process of decolonization in 2022, by deepening their relationship with plants in relation to that journey. Fazle invited people from different communities, in which they have been invested, to support them in the collective work Fertile Ground /: A personal research into the spiritual relationship between the Snake Plant (Vrouwentong), which their Nani (mother’s mother) brought with her when she migrated from Suriname, then still colonized by the Dutch. Their Nani has been nurturing this plant ever since, and gifted several branches to her children and grandchildren. The Snake Plant, native to tropical West Africa, is part of a colonial history. This plant has become a symbol of migration, rootedness, family and hybridization.
The residency also builds on Dancing on the Edge’s ongoing artistic research around decentralized artistic encounter (converging practices) and overlapping geographies, and in which space has been growing for the presence of plants.
You are invited into this project too!
You are welcome to participate the Dance Labs, Henna Lab, Incense Lab taking place during this residency. We will dance, build altars, create incense with Farah Rahman, and feed our unique relations with Henna, facilitated by Anima Jhagroe-Ruissen.
Plublic Sharing
A public sharing on 1 November will close the residency, we warmly invite all participants of the Labs to take part.
Please read more about the Labs and register for free here
