Violeta Luna In Aotearoa, June 2014

Violeta Luna

Violeta LunaMexican performance artist Violeta Luna will be in Wellington in June 2014 for the ADSA conference (25-28 June). Magdalena Aotearoa is delighted to be able to host Violeta for a public workshop, which will be held either just before or just after the conference.

At the conference, which has the title “Restoring Balance: Ecology, Sustainability, Performance”, Violeta will give a keynote speech and a public performance of her solo “NK 603: Action for Performer and e- Maíz”, which is about the impact of genetically modified corn in Mexico.

The Body in Action: Paths Towards a Personal Cartography

Violeta’s work activates the relationship between theatre, performance art and community engagement. Working within a multidimensional space that allows for the crossing of aesthetic and conceptual borders, Luna uses her body as a territory to question and comment on social and political phenomena. She performs and teaches workshops throughout Latin America, Europe, Africa, and USA. While primarily working as a solo performer, she is also an associate artist of the San Francisco-based performance collectives La Pocha Nostra and Secos & Mojados. She is a Creative Capital Fellow, and a member of the Magdalena Project of International Women Performance Artists. Significant works include: Requiem for a Lost Land, NK603: Action for Performer and e-Maiz, Frida and a series of collaborations with La Pocha Nostra.

This workshop has been created for artists of performance, dancers, actors, spoken word or visual artists interested in performance art and in exploring the intersection of the personal, the theatrical and the political through stage actions. Workshop participants will make use of their personal memory and identity as the expressive territory where they will chart a vocabulary of stage actions. Drawing on their use of body, participants will also work on imagery related to their individual and social understanding of gender, sexuality and race.

Some thematic threads in the workshop include: Body (fiction and non-fiction, presence and inner strength, body as subject/object;) Space (internal and external, spatial relationships, the intervention of public and private space;) Time (real-time, fictional-time, ritual-time;) Action (site-specific, action – reaction, responses to real and imagined stimuli, audience interaction, the creative accident.)

Who should apply: Professional or students of performance, spoken-word, actors, dancers and visual artists. All applicants should have a basic understanding of the discipline of performance art.

Wellington, June 21-23 Theatre Lab, Massey University, Wellington

Limited to 16 places $150 per participant

To register interest or for further information, please email Emma Willis: emmacreagh@gmail.com