etb English
Theatre
Berlin International Performing Arts Center

Through an autobiographical reappraisal of choreographer Caroline Alves’ family history, the solo performance Transatlantica delves into the voids between Brazil and Europe, between past and present.

It is one among many family histories that are marked by settler colonialism in Brazil: histories based on the erasure of indigenous ancestors, carrying colonial continuities into the present. Following the traces of Senhorinha, the indigenous great-great-grandmother of whom only the colonial name remains, Caroline Alves explores the violent nexus of patriarchy and colonialism.

Transatlantica interweaves dance and storytelling, atmospherically oscillating between the elements of the stage set: the crystalline cold of a block of ice and the spreading, reflecting water that connects the continents. With tenderness and rage, Caroline Alves confronts her ancestral history and present, searching in the voids of the “official narrative” for the place from which to speak with her own words and movements that may break with the vast silence.