"Memory of a body through time" is a dance work featuring 5 women that is mapped around Colombian dancer/choreographer Yesenia Fuentes’ sense-memories of her lived experiences of violence in her country before her immigration to Canada and the somatic transformation that has occurred in the 20 years since her departure. In this work, collective and individual bodies and the materiality of domestic objects collaborate with a sweeping soundscape and an evocative industrial design to explore the possibility of healing collective and individual embodied trauma through acts of joy, transformation, autonomy and solidarity.  

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“Memory of a body through time,” involves a tapestry of ensemble work, solo explorations, stark poetic lighting design and a collaboration with domestic objects (a collapsable table, chairs and a laundry line) to explore how time acts on and through collective and individual bodies. The choreographic research is anchored in history and time as they relate to place, body, memory and  physical and metaphysical space. 

The work poses questions like: How can women who have experienced systemic violence help each other to both hold and release their grief? Can time, stillness and solidarity be a salve for our wounds; a source of light, possibility and hope? How does the trauma of violence move through the body, and how can the radical act of listening make space for revolutionary change? How can autonomy be regained in the wake of state manipulation? What is the relationship between strength and softness? How can memory and dreamscapes be a site of shared knowledge? How do individual and collective bodies process national violence and is it possible, over time, to get free?

Yesenia’s values of radical softness, risk-taking, collaboration and perseverance drive a process that centers humanity, depth, connection, beauty in simplicity, and community as an act of resistance and joy.