Research about the choreographic transfers between Chile and Germany, through the “Jooss-Leeder system” and two of its representatives: Patricio Bunster (1924-2006) and Joan Turner (born in 1927), trained by Kurt Jooss (1901-1979) and Sigurd Leeder (1902-1981). Born at the Folkwangschule in Essen in 1927, according to part of Labanian theories, this system has also developed in other schools: at the Jooss-Leeder School at Dartington Hall and in Cambridge, at the Sigurd Leeder School of Dance in London and Herisau, at the Palucca Hochschule für Tanz in Dresden, at the Universidad de Chile and at the Centro de Danza Espiral in Santiago. Posing the hypothesis that Patricio Bunster would have introduced this system in a part of Germany where this branch of the Ausdruckstanz would never have been taught, this project reveals the round trips of a transnational and transhistorical factory of gestures. Starting from the speeches and experiences of dancers who studied with Joan Turner and Patricio Bunster, it will also be a question of returning to the educational and artistic contributions of Jean Cébron, Hans Züllig and Ernst Uthoff.

How do we name and revalue today the contributions of Kurt Jooss and Sigurd Leeder in Chile? And, simultaneously, what if it were Latin American corporeities that affected European methods and dances? What would be the interactions of this “Chilean microbiota”, a hybrid, colonized and colonizing lore, whose strengths of its gestural elements have not yet been elucidated?

Direction and investigation: Valentina Morales

• Production: Collective Pareidolia

• Dancers: Fernando Cortizo, Raymond Hilbert, Julieta Pavez, Hugo Peña, Marcelo Sepúlveda, Monika Wacker

• Video register: Hugo Cordeau and Kim Münster

• Editing: Hugo Cordeau

Acknowledgements: Milton Camilo, Francisco Rios, Azur Cordeau Morales Valdés, Anna Michaelis, Sylviane Pagès

Funding: National Center for Dance (Pantin), Association of Dance Researchers (France).