12 July: Phyllis Akinyi
TIME: 12 July 10.00-22.00h
START: Elmegade, Copenhagen N
CATEGORY: Dancer/choreographer
Live-stream every hour on the hour on www.facebook.com/walkingcopenhagen
Mourning.
I’m mourning.
We’re mourning.
I’m mourning the ancestors upon whose forced labour much of this land’s wealth was built.
I’m mourning my brothers and sisters dying across the pond.
I’m mourning my family in the Mediterranean Sea.
I’m mourning the relatives that didn’t go viral..
I’m mourning.
I’m mourning.
I’m mourning, I’m mourning so hard I can barely breathe.
I’m mourning my baby brother in Bornholm.
Bornholm.
Bornholm.
Born..
I’m mourning the fact that mourning is a part of being me.
It comes with this body.
It comes with this world.
I’m tired. So tired.
For 12 hours l will walk with the spirits that I’m mourning.
Will it heal something? I don’t know. Will it change something? Probably not. Will I reach exhaustion? Definitely. Will I keep going? Until I die.
If you are tired, keep going
If you are scared, keep going
If you are hungry, keep going
If you want to taste freedom, keep going
– Harriet Tubman
DOCUMENTATION JULY 12
FILM
10.00 h
11.00 h
12.00 h
13.00 h
14.00 h
15.00 h
16.00 h
17.00 h
18.00 h
19.00 h
20.00 h
21.00 h
22.00 h
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Phyllis Akinyi (1987) is a Danish-Kenyan dancer, choreographer and anthropologist with a new-found/re-found base in Copenhagen. Having spent the last 15 years being somewhat of a nomad, she investigates intersections between movement, culture, and identity, and has developed a dance practice combining contemporary dance and performance with folkloric traditions.
Akinyi centers her artistic work around the polycentric and polyrhythmic body in correlation with notions of identities caught in cultural ‘in betweens’ or ‘hyphenated identities’. To put it more simply, being a hyphenated identity herself, Akinyi uses dance to better understand herself and the world around her, and as a vessel to connect to her ancestry and roots. The past, present, and future are eternally intertwined and Akinyi moves from a place of feeling and instinct, where there is no separation of self and space, body and universe.
Bottom photo: Esme Mai