Montreal, June 13, 2023 – Bogotá, a new large-scale creation by Andrea Peña, will make its world premiere at the 17th Venice Biennale’s International Festival of Contemporary Dance on July 13, 2023 with her company Andrea Peña & Artists (AP&A). A Colombian choreographer who grew up in Canada, Peña is the first international artist to ever win the Venice Biennale’s call for a new choreographic work by an artist under the age of 35, previously reserved for Italian choreographers.
Bogotá
A genuine multidisciplinary intersection between contemporary dance, fashion, and industrial design, this new work explores the notions of death and resurrection through a Colombian historical perspective. Death and rebirth inhabit the bodies of the performers in a performance with post-industrial, queer, and Latin American baroque overtones.
Created with fourteen long-time AP&A collaborators, such as composer, electronic musician and 3D sound designer Debbie Doe, rehearsal director and researcher Helen Simard, and director Bobby Leon, and brought to life by its nine performers, the work unfolds within a world of harsh and arid industrial design, a stage that, in its material rigor, intertwines European renaissance and sacred and profane Andean symbolism. On stage, large-scale metal constructions underline both the strength and fragility of the body.
The company’s second large-scale creation, Bogotá is built on the foundation of a body of work known for its rigor, humanity, and ability to destabilize our societal notions. Taking shape in a fundamentally multidisciplinary space, Bogotá places Peña’s choreography and industrial design background in dialogue with her hybrid cultural perspective as a Colombian immigrant living in Canada.
About Andrea Peña & Artists
With a Master’s degree in Industrial Design from Concordia University, as well as a career as Head Stylist at Rudsak and as a performer for Ballet BC and Ballets Jazz Montréal, Andrea Peña’s work effortlessly imagines interdisciplinary approaches and creates systems of negotiation that allow AP&A’s multidisciplinary artists to develop synergies with one another.
Founded in 2014 in Montreal, Quebec, AP&A is a multidisciplinary company of thirty-something artists that fuses body and materiality, choreography and design, into performative, digital and sculptural works to create living art worlds. AP&A’s multifaceted practice explores the peripheries of social imaginaries as hybrid narratives that nurture the intersection of different fields, disciplines and individuals.
About Andrea Peña & Artists
With a Master’s degree in Industrial Design from Concordia University, as well as a career as Head Stylist at Rudsak and as a performer for Ballet BC and Ballets Jazz Montréal, Andrea Peña’s work effortlessly imagines interdisciplinary approaches and creates systems of negotiation that allow AP&A’s multidisciplinary artists to develop synergies with one another.
Founded in 2014 in Montreal, Quebec, AP&A is a multidisciplinary company of thirty-something artists that fuses body and materiality, choreography and design, into performative, digital and sculptural works to create living art worlds. AP&A’s multifaceted practice explores the peripheries of social imaginaries as hybrid narratives that nurture the intersection of different fields, disciplines and individuals.
About the Venice Biennale
Founded in 1895, the Venice Biennale is an international cultural exposition bringing together the best art, architecture, cinema, dance, music, and theater the world has to offer in Venice. The Biennale is at the forefront of research and the promotion of new practices in contemporary art, organizing exhibitions and research programs for each of its departments.
