After Colonial

Dialogic Reflections on Decolonial Performance and Artistic Practices Between British Columbia and the Philippines

Abstract

This dialogic and conversational work reflects on artistic method of two artists who share migratory and diasporic experiences. The authors met and became collaborators on two transnational dance projects (Field I and Colonial) scafolded within their conversation the logic, ethic, and politics of transnational collaboration by engaging in a dialogic exchange. In this conversation both authors generate self-reflexive discourse on the ethics and aesthetics of transnational co-creation of dance and theatre projects that connect Canada and the Philippines. By looking at art making and circulation as modes of intervening in and reworking the world, the authors render possible aparatus of an ethical collaboration between artists of varying migratory subjectivities. In this article, both artists reflect on the implications of cultural appropriations, capitalism, and colonialism in contemporary performance ecologies in Canada and the Philippines. As artists who have extended histories of education, theatrical practice, community engagement and living in British Columbia, this article offers the following dialogue as critical intervention in decolonizing performance based theory and practice by historizing, exploring, and unpacking dance and theatre praxis within the diasporic Filipino communities in Canada. Authors argue that for transnational connection and collaboration to ethically emerge it requires critical attention to the uneven distribution of material resources. Along with this is a consistent reflexivity on ethical considerations of the unequal power relations between collaborators who are part of the ensemble of these collaborations.