Contemporary Dance Company of Angola
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The Contemporary Dance Company of Angola (CDC)[1] has been founded in 1991, being incessantly confronted with the specific adversities from an African country, where dancing, as an academic and theatrical category, never had any historical roots. As the first professional Angolan dance group, CDC has been asserting its position, nowadays enjoying a large prestige and respect within the Angolan society.
From the beginning, it has been directed by the dancer and choreographer Ana Clara Guerra Marques, who believes that a good way to performing contemporary dance in Africa is taking African cultural heritage into account. Trained in universal techniques and styles of academic dance, its dancers confirm that a permanent and strong technical background is requested for professional dancing.
The main target of the Company is the creation and disclosure of new languages, new aesthetics and new situations for the Angolan dance, rising it to a contemporary level, through the recovery of the popular and traditional culture’s elements, while expressing and stressing inherent aspects of the human being as a citizen of the world and a protagonist of the Angolan social scene. Thus, in its work, CDC explores the cohabitation between traditional and contemporary dance and crosses statuary postures and elements of traditional dances with urban attitudes and realities. Absurdity, oddity and humor always lurk the background of this Company’s creations, serving as a pretext to dissect Angolan society: war, violence, hypocrisy and the indifference of the city towards the problems of its inhabitants.
Striking where it hurts, this Company likes to make fun of the audience, provoking it with a view to stress the social problems existing in Angola. Its performances are used as a way of social intervention and denunciation.
CDC is the first dance Company in Angola, leaving the traditional stages of theatres and performing in water lakes, beerhouses or art galleries. In the face of the nonexistence of any company in Angola with this vocation, and considering its pedagogical responsibility for an aesthetic education of the public, CDC has created a “Repertoire” including classical and modern pieces to demonstrate the historical and evolutionary context of dancing.
Besides its performances in Angola, the Contemporary Dance Company is the Angolan contemporary dance emissary in different European and African countries, where its creations have been fairly appreciated and recognized.
