Marion Landers' For Coloured Girls: Out of the Womb examines the trauma and triumphs of confronting systemic racism

Livestreaming via VIDF, the dance-theatre work mines the artist’s family roots in Cape Town’s “Coloured” community

Post Sponsored by VANCOUVER INTERNATIONAL DANCE FESTIVAL

What does it mean that Black folks can dance? It’s how we remember what cannot be said. - Ntozake Shange

In For Coloured Girls: Out of the Womb, dance artist Marion Landers responds to Ntozake Shange's famous choreopoem.

The dance-theatre work, streaming January 21 and 22 via the Vancouver International Dance Festival, examines the cycle of life from an intergenerational perspective in a family with roots in the “Coloured” community of Cape Town, South Africa.

Through the beat of the drum and the conjuring of memories with her grandmother, grandfather, father, and mother, creator-performer Landers examines the trauma and triumphs of confronting systemic racism.

Embracing the gift of structure the choreopoem endows and the right to sit honestly with that complicated label—“Coloured”, Landers concocts her own shade of Blue.

A consideration of birth and a woman's choice to assert herself in hierarchies of race, class and prejudice, are at the root of this contemporary dance-theatre story that dives deep into one family's struggle to negotiate mixed heritage and to survive the damaging legacy of apartheid.

Vancouver-based Landers is a mixed person of African, Indonesian, and European descent who works across acting, choreography, and academia. She has danced with Zab Maboungou/Companie Danse Nyata Nyata, (Montréal/Congo), Balet Brazil, Laura Monteiro (Vancouver/Brazil), Afro-Jazz Drum & Dance Ensemble, Thelma Gibson, (Vancouver) and Umoja! The Spirit of Togetherness, Thembi Nyandani (South Africa).

You can register for the livestream performances, taking place January 21 at 7 pm and January 22 at 4 pm, at VIDF here. Admission is free or by donation. LIVE post-show talkback will be hosted by VIDF coproducers Barbara Bourget & Jay Hirabayashi on January 21. The performance features original music and percussion by Ezeadi Onukwulu. Bourget served as dance mentor, while Chantal Gibson was writer-mentor on the project.

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