Heidi Seppälä has been accepted for Villa Karo’s artist residence in Grand Popo, Benin, Africa from Jan2 until March25.

Together with theatre director and writer Jalmari Nummiluikki, Heidi will be working on the context of DANCO – School for De-Colonizing the Art of Dance. Heidi is also creating and mentoring a workshop for development of more culturally inclusive practices within creative organisations. 

DANCO – School for De-Colonizing the Art of Dance is a recently formed polyphonic, collaborative ensemble which produces new practices and thinking into dance art, making cultural positions of power visible. It is a multicultural environment in which competence is not mirrored through any hegemonic culture but ways of being in the body are equated, explored and produced in an equal relationship with each other and the environment. One of our goals is to liberate the praxis and thinking of European dance from its colonial identity. Within this framework, we will explore ways to think, observe and use our bodies as tools for increasing interspecies empathy. The goal is to produce different kinds of knowledge to be shared in creative contexts and used in creation of our performance praxis.