One Drop, a new performance by Sonya Lindfors & working group, is a speculative summoning, a decolonial dream, an autopsy of the Western stage and an operetta.

Defying definition and belonging to multiple categories, the work dives into the poetics and politics of relations, creating a performance that reignites connections lost or forgotten.

The title of the work refers to two separate concepts – the one drop rhythm which is a reggae style drum beat as well as to the one drop rule of the Race Separation Act, created in the United States in the early 1900s, according to which a single drop of “Black blood” made a person “Black” despite their appearance. Through its multiple starting points, the work interrogates the ghosts of the Western stage and its entanglements and relationships to capitalism, coloniality and modernity.

Award winning Cameroonian-Finnish choreographer and artistic director, Sonya Lindfors creates important work exploring power, representation and Black body politics. She is the Artistic Director and founding member of UrbanApa, an interdisciplinary and counter hegemonic arts community that offers a platform for new ideas and feminist art practices.

Watch post-show talk

Sonya Lindfors in conversation with Freddie Opoku-Addaie, recorded live at Battersea Arts Centre as part of Dance Umbrella Festival 2023

Gallery

Performance

UK Premiere

  • Venue: Battersea Arts Centre, Grand Hall
  • Date: Thu 19 - Fri 20 October 2023, 7pm
  • Admission: Thu 19 – Pay What You Can (recommended £18); Fri 20 – £18, £15
  • Duration: 110 minutes (no interval)
  • Age guidance: 13+

Additional events: POST SHOW-TALKS
19 Oct with Sonya Lindfors & facilitated by Dawn Estefan for Black and Global Majority audiences | Members Bar (45 mins)

20 Oct with Sonya Lindfors & Freddie Opoku-Addaie | Grand Hall (20 mins)

More info below

Content: Haze, flashing lights, loud music

Access: All performances are relaxed performances. A transcript of the soundscape and text spoken will be available. You can request a printed version of this at the box office or you can download from a QR code onto your phone. Please note – this means that some audience may use their phones during the performance.

Dance Umbrella Festival 2023 Across London & Online
6-31 October

This event has passed.

Credit Tuukka Ervasti

Big Pulse logoCreative Europe logoBattersea Arts Centre logoFinnish Institute in the UK and Ireland logo

About the artist +

Sonya Lindfors

Sonya Lindfors is a Cameroonian-Finnish choreographer, artistic director, facilitator and educator who graduated with an MA in choreography from the University of Arts Helsinki in 2013.

She is the Artistic Director and founding member of UrbanApa, an interdisciplinary and counter hegemonic arts community that offers a platform for new ideas and feminist art practices. UrbanApa hosts workshops, festivals, labs, mentoring and publications among other things.

Lindfors makes her own and collaborative productions, curated programmes and performative actions. Her performance works have been shown and supported by Beursschouwburg, Kampnagel, Spring Utrecht, CODA – festival, Black Box Theater Oslo, Zodiak – Centre for New Dance among others. She is a member of Miracle Workers Collective which represented Finland at the 58th Venice Biennale.

Lindfors’ recent works We Should All Be Dreaming, Soft Variations Online and camouflage centre around questions of Blackness and Black body politics, representation and power structures. In all her positions she pursues creating and facilitating anti-racist and feminist platforms, using festivals, performances, publications or workshops to operate as the site of empowerment and radical collective dreaming.

Lindfors has been awarded several prizes, including the international Live Art Anti Prize 2018 and the State Prize for Public Information in 2022.

Cast & Creative +

  • Sonya Lindfors
    Direction, Choreography & Concept
  • Divine Tasinda, Isabella Shaw, Marlon Moilanen, Leo Ikhilor, Miranda Chambers, Selina Jones, Sonya Lindfors
    Performers
  • Antonia Atarah, Hamis Ahmed, Geoffrey Erista, Nori Kin, Isabella Shaw, Mariama Slåttøy, Alma Bø Gettachew, Erno Aaltonen, Jussi Matikainen, Sanna Levo, Angel Emmanuel, Aino Koski, Janina Salmela, Sonya Lindfors
    Working Group
  • Aino Koski
    Set Design
  • Jussi Matikainen
    Sound Design
  • Erno Aaltonen
    Light Design
  • Sanna Levo
    Costume Design
  • Janina Salmela
    Choreographer’s Assistant
  • Angel Emmanuel
    Costume Assistant
  • Timo Tikka
    Sound Design Assistant
  • Elina Tuomisto
    Seamstress
  • Alen Nsambu, Ornilia Ubisse, Judith Arupa, Johanna Karlberg, Jaakko Pallasvuo
    Contributors to process
  • Sonya Lindfors
    Libretto
  • Sonya Lindfors & working group
    Other texts
  • Tuukka Ervasti
    Photography

Credits +

Residencies
Tanzfabrik berlin, KWP Kunstenwerkplaats, Buda Kortrijk, Beursschouwburg

Supported by
Koneen Säätiö, Suomen Kulttuurirahasto, Alfred Kordelinin säätiö, Nordic Culture Point

Production
UTT ry and Sonya Lindfors

Co-production
Zodiak – center for new dance, Goethe-Institut (International Co-production Fund), Big Pulse Dance Alliance (a project co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union), Dance Umbrella, Julidans, Finnish Cultural Institute for the Benelux, Apap – FEMINIST FUTURES (a project co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European
Union)

Presented in partnership with Battersea Arts Centre. Supported by the Finnish Institute in the UK and Ireland.

 

Venue & Access +

Venue

Battersea Arts Centre
Lavender Hill
London
SW11 5TN

How to get there
Access info

Post-show talk on 19 Oct for Black and Global Majority Audiences +

Date: Thursday 19 October
Time: 21:00-21:45 (+ 15 minutes open space)
Location: Members Bar at Battersea Arts Centre

What is the event?
The post-show conversation is for Black and Global Majority audience members who attend the show on Thursday 19th. It is a space for dialogue and to discuss the themes of the piece with choreographer Sonya Lindfors, and will be facilitated by Dawn Estefan.

The objective of this discussion is:
• to create connections between local Black and Global Majority audience members
• to have the possibility to discuss the themes of the show in relation to lived experience, in safe, facilitated environment

Who can attend?
This post-show conversation has been created to make space specifically for Black and Global Majority* identifying audience members, although no one will be turned away. We will be led by each audience member to self-identify but we do ask our non-Black or Global Majority audience to consider attending the post-show discussion on Friday 20 October, which will be open to all audience members, so that we can create a space which is supportive to the objective of the event.

*We define Global Majority as a collective term that first and foremost speaks to and encourages those so-called to think of themselves as belonging to the global majority. It refers to people who are Black, Asian, Brown, dual-heritage, indigenous to the global south, and or have been racialised as ‘ethnic minorities’. Since Black, indigenous, and people of colour represent over 80% of the world’s population, this wording points out the demographic inaccuracy of the euphemism “minority”.

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