Sonia Boyce

*Dance of Belém*, 2011. Three-channel video installation with sound. 7 minutes 7 seconds

Working with Lisbon-based contemporary dancer Vania Gala and DJ Johnny Cooltrain, forms of anxiety are expressed in aesthetic terms in the three-part film Dance of Belém, where the dancer and DJ are independently invited to create a response to the historic and contemporary nature of the Praça do Império gardens of Belém – a popular location in the heart of Lisbon, built to commemorate Portugal’s imperial past.

On the verge of the uncontainable, the audacious movements of the dancer and the infectious rhythm of the soundtrack urge us to consider what it means for the black body to ‘act-up’ in the public realm, as three films run concurrently, all edited to the same Koduro-inspired soundtrack.

Like free-form jazz, Koduro is a contemporary Angolan/Portuguese musical form that comes out of the club scene to express the creative mixing of diverse up-tempo metropolitan influences – cutting across musical genres.

Demonstrating a liberated urban confidence about looking (the gaze) and being looked at, Dance of Belém challenges expectations of the black female presence in public space. All of the films make reference to classic conceptual art concerns from the 1970s about the relationship between violence, life, death, place, the everyday and belonging, most notably the work of artists like Adrian Piper, Vito Acconci, Valie Export and Ana Mendieta. Throughout, there are several interlacing dialogues, or what could be called choreographies: between the dancer and her improvised responses to the gardens; the passers-by who react to or ignore her acting up; and, between the dancer’s improvised movements and the camera crew trying to keep up with her.