The Same Colombian: a tête-à-tête for two

The Same Colombian: a tête-à-tête for two
Performance. (2012)

The Same Colombian: a tête-à-tête for two is a live performance that incorporates a multimedia set composed of video projections and a coffee maker brewing coffee.

The performance begins with us, the same Colombians, dressed in identical clothing, setting up a coffee maker to brew Colombian coffee while a short stylized audio introduction, appropriated from the Colombia is Passion marketing campaign plays, setting up a general premise of who we are.

Once the coffee maker is set up, and as the presentation concludes, we stretch in preparation for what seems to be an series of energetic and athletic actions. The is a sudden shift as reggaeton bumps from speaks and the performers begin to dance Choqué, an urban Colombian dance from late 2009, in which bodies crash into each other to the drum and bass beats of the music, creating a regular collision of bodies on every beat.

While our bodies crash into each other, with moves learned and re(per)formed from videos of the dance, text and images are projected over the dancing bodies. Selected from from a diverse archive of news, advertising, propaganda, travel advisories, the text appears in fragments, displayed momentarily on every beat of the music. Interspersed throughout the text are photos of the same colombians as children that create a memory of a single, unique, same Colombian in the spectator’s imagination. Spectators are forced to concentrate on either the dance or the projections, creating a space in which the juxtaposition of media and bodies resists full capture or absorption.

Once this rhythm is established between bodies and media, the performers introduce a new element to the piece: the exchange of each other’s clothes. Using the the points of collision and dance steps as tools to support each other, this transfer becomes a test that supports the construction of mutual identity between the performers, all while the performers’ bodies collide continuously. In the end, such a task is senseless because both Colombians are wearing identical clothes. Uniformed from head to toe, including underwear, this gesture continues to complicate ideas of sameness and difference through humor and obstacle.

Once we have finished our exchange and are fully dressed, without interrupting their collisions or the dance, celebrate the completion of their task by drinking a large cup of Colombian coffee together, now fully brewed, taking turns sipping from the same cup.

This piece was developed with support from the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics’ EmergeNYC program.

(Above:) Video footage from the June 26, 2012 performance of “The Same Colombian: a tête-à-tête for two” with the projections from the same piece overlaid, authored by Benjamin Lundberg and Carlos Monroy.

Performance History:

Re Performed 17 January 2013
at SP Escola de Teatro, São Paulo
during The Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics’ 8th Encuentro
Cities | Bodies | Action: The Politics of Passion in the Americas
Archival Videography by Polina Porras & The Hemispheric Institute
Compilation Editing by Benjamin Lundberg

Performed 26 June 2012
during The Hemispheric Institute’s EmergeNYC 2012 group showing
at The Club, La MaMa E.T.C.
Archival Videography and Editing by Victor Bautista
Compilation Editing by Benjamin Lundberg