Laz­aro Ben­itez is work­ing on a doc­u­ment­ary cho­reo­graphy in which body, music and archive poet­ic­ally recre­ate a moment in the his­tory of cor­por­ate viol­ence in Colom­bia. Dance becomes a weapon for memory and resistance.

What type of ges­tures can be pro­duced in a con­text of occu­pa­tion? How can dance bear wit­ness to our social real­ity and our rela­tion­ship with the world? These ques­tions run through the second part of a dip­tych begun in 2023 at the Fest­iv­al d’Av­ign­on with a 30-minute cho­reo­graph­ic ges­ture, which looked at the glob­al phe­nomen­on of mul­tina­tion­al com­pan­ies occupy­ing the ter­rit­or­ies of indi­gen­ous com­munit­ies. Today, Laz­aro Ben­itez is work­ing to expand the work into an hour-long format, focus­ing on the El Cer­re­jon site in north­ern Colom­bia, one of the world’s largest open-cast coal mines. There, in August 2001, a mul­tina­tion­al com­pany obtained the land of the vil­lage of Tabaco, whose inhab­it­ants were imme­di­ately for­cibly evicted. Over the years, the very memory of the vil­lage – which has been wiped off the map – has been erased, and with it the pos­sib­il­ity of res­ist­ance and struggle. In response, the cho­reo­graph­er works this piece as an act of defense of their memory, col­lect­ing the memor­ies of the inhab­it­ants and a doc­u­ment­ary archive.