I meet performer-choreographer Tatiana Mejía at a cafe near Uferstudios. Despite meeting for the first time, we know that each of our artist’s circles in Berlin is buzzing with a shared theme: that of the state’s budget cuts for the performing arts and especially the miniscule position provisioned for dance in this budget. In a couple of days, we will join a united demo (as we translate the German word Kundgebung) demanding greater recognition of the value of dance in Berlin’s artistic landscape. We would like the city to justify our use of the hashtag #BerlinTanzhauptstadt.
However, we never mention our shared concern until the end of the interview. I jump into the first question.
Parvathi: Tatiana, you have made a series of solo works, where you are performing alone on stage. Yet one can see that you work in active collaborations that make their presence felt on stage – such as in SWAY with the video reactive sound, video animation and project mapping., video animation that engages with your movement, and stage design that constantly alters the shape of the room. How do you perceive your work in this oscillation between solo work and collaboration? What does collaboration mean for you?
Tatiana: As a performance-maker, I enjoy the process of bringing my story and experiences into the work. One of my first works was a solo when I did not have a big community in Berlin and wanted to share my artistic practice at this early stage. So performing solo, gives me the space to show my perspectives. Especially as I see contemporary dance as a hybrid form that is constantly changing in conversation with, let's say, traditional dance that I was raised with, but it is also a conversation with the western perspective of what is traditional dance. So I am experimenting a lot with improvisation, and how that looks when applied to different dances — classical, folk and different genres — starting with the history of each of these forms.
When it comes to collaboration, the most important part is to be in conversation, and how can another technique or discipline maintain dialogue especially in the sense of coming into the same questions. For instance, with SWAY, we had the question about how we can create a constant oscillation and maintain an in-between-ness thematically. So I just try to connect the dots with each collaborator’s field of offerings.
P: Does your dot move when traversing with that of someone who comes from another practice?
T: Although in my work, I come from my perspective and style of working, it is important for me to create a space for everyone to play with this Idea from their point of view. How I think of it is that my work, or my piece is my home, and I welcome everybody to my home. Now they can place themselves anywhere they want in this home — in the kitchen, or in the hall.
P: Classical dance and folk dance are restrictive or limited categories. Do you agree?
T: Indeed, true. But I was raised with these forms in different hierarchies. Being in Berlin allowed me to look at these hierarchies in different ways and break these hierarchies —What is good dance or not-good dance? What dances come from institutionalized structures? Which dances are allowed or forbidden? Before I moved here, I was interested in dances that represent resistance too. This is why I work with Gagá dance, a dance of resistance of the Dominican-Haitian community that evolved from the sugarcane slaves. It is interesting for me to acknowledge these hierarchies against non-institutionalized dances and observe them from the contemporary technique and choreographic perspective.
P: Traditional or non-institutionalized dances, even if in dialogue with the contemporary dance context, often also tends to get exoticized. What tools do you use to resist such exoticization? With what consciousness do you frame this in your performances?
T: I am interested in dances that represent this sense of protest or resistance. So as much as the traditional dances, I am also seeing the same spirit in Yvonne Rainer’s No Manifesto. Ultimately, I cannot control the gaze of the audience. For instance, when I first presented my solo work with Gagá dance and was costumed in a colourful skirt, a journalist asked me at the end of a performance if the work was about a parrot. This was very shocking for me and I wondered if the written supporting text was read at all. So I just offer my perspective, questions and critical view from how I see it. But I also understand that the audience can get an impression from their own references. Misinterpretations are bound to be there.
P: What term do you prefer: non-institutionalized dances or traditional dances?
T: Perhaps non-classical dances would be more like it.
P: There are many layers to non-classical dances in their own contexts, with critiques and conversations within the scene in places where everyone knows these forms. Do you feel the need to bring those densities also in your performances for a Berlin audience?
T: I try to be as sincere as possible as an artist and try to express myself and offer it from that place. I am very aware that this is a very far away dance context and socio-political situation of my hometown, and therefore, a certain disconnection is natural. But for me it's important anyway to bring the full perspective, because I believe in the power of dance and try to sincerely offer my body’s intuition to the audience. Ofcourse, I am very contagiously inspired by the contemporary dance scene in Berlin. Also having the possibility to express myself has been an important element in making things work in this place. Back in my home country, I wouldn't be able to or would not be supported to show a dance for resistance or a dance that has Afro-diasporic roots. So Berlin has offered me a good space for that.
P: Would you say this ‘freedom of expression’, perhaps a paradox to say that in these times, is one of the reasons to keep you here?
T: Yes, for me it's one core reason. For me it has been an open door, and a space where everyone can bring their own questions and their dance. I would like to add that I am very hopeful about the Berlin scene, that we will overcome this moment of cuts in funding for the arts. I am optimistic about such decisions being reversed. I will continue showing my work and collaborating with different artists.
At this point, a song that I like begins to play over the loudspeakers. I want to hum it and am reminded of Tatiana’s magnificent voice and her incredible vocal abilities, that I had witnessed in a performance. After a brief fan girl moment about her singing, I ask her:
P: You have different dance training and vocal abilities that each offer the possibility to become the centre of your artistic practice. So what makes contemporary dance the root practice from which you reach out to other practices?
T: Before I moved to Berlin I used to have two parallel lives. In Santo Domingo, I was a singer for the local rock scene and a dancer for the state institutions. After moving here, I felt the need to assemble my practice. Still, when I sing, I feel it innately that it comes from the dance first, from the movement, from the body. So instead of orchestrating or separating, my practice has been increasingly to see the voice as coming from the body, as another part of the dancing body, and complimenting the theme and the movement.
P: When do you know a work is finished?
T: Tricky question. I would say that when you have the feeling that you are clear about what you want to say through this work, then the work is ready to be shown or developed further. But if you don’t have the core idea with clarity, the unsureness would be revealed in the work. This essence can occur to us in an image or an experience, or come to us in a studio years before the work is done. But one needs to work with it, and one’s body needs to tell that you are ready.
P: What projects and ideas are you busy with at the moment?
T: At the end of September 2024, I will show a work for young audiences ‘In der Luft’ made in choreographic collaboration with Kareth Schaffer. The performance is about boredom and air. I’m also in the research phase for a new group piece with voice and movement, intertwining different genres. I am interested in contemporary dance, but also in what a lot of contemporary dancers want – which is finding their own way. I am also trying to figure out what it is with an open mind.
Published in October 2024. Text by Parvathi Ramanathan.