Casino is what salsa dancing has been called in Cuba, referring to the place where you go to dance. Casino is also the title of this piece.
In Casino, Swedish-Chilean Ofelia Jarl Ortega, Nina Sandino from Nicaragua and Jao Moon from Colombia, move on a fictitious dance floor set in a Latin American club for couples dancing. Each dancer brings with them their own relationship to salsa, letting it reverberate in their body through a repertoire of historical and personal memories.
By the engagement of the dancers and the sounds of their steps, the music is present in its absence. In a subtle, restrained, detailed and playful way, the three dancers connect, and fail to connect, simultaneously.
Duration 45 min + aftertalk for 20 minutes for the performances that starts at 20:00, a conversation between Ofelia Jarl Ortega and producer and dramaturge Micaela Kühn Jara
Contextualizing salsa in Sweden
A big Latino boom took place internationally in the 90s and 00s, shedding light on artists like Shakira, Jennifer Lopez, Ricky Martin and Marc Anthony. Of course, there have been Latino booms before and after that too. “Latino” is, as we know, not a genre in itself, as Latin America includes from Chile in the south to Mexico in the north. In Sweden, the early 00s Latino explosion made salsa very popular. Everyone was dancing it, including the Latin American diaspora.
Chilenos have never really had salsa as a national dance. Instead, it was very big in Cuba, Colombia and the Caribbean. There, every dinner ends with salsa dancing, and every birthday celebration is a dance. In Chile, the social dance has been cumbia, or the folk dance cueca. Nevertheless, salsa gatherings among Chilenos became huge in Sweden. The phenomenon grew in Sweden due to the big number of Chilenos living in the country post Pinochet’s dictatorship in the 70s-90s. For the exiled Chilenos, salsa became a way to connect to the Latin American background. It became a subculture within the diaspora. And to be Latino you needed to know how to dance salsa, a cliché that still haunts us in this piece.
Choreographer’s statement
“In my family it was only my uncle Rafael who danced. He even had his own salsa club at the opera restaurant in Malmö in the 90s. But as salseros mostly drink water while dancing, the club had to close down due to low drink sales, despite the well visited evenings.
When I first traveled to Chile as a grown up I met the blossoming reggaeton scene, and the feminist subgenre neo-perreo. For some years reggaeton was my connection to Latin America and my own heritage, until I stumbled upon salsa. The salsa music has always been part of what’s been played at home, but the dance had been hidden for me. Now salsa is all on my mind. And my newfound way of connecting to a Latin American diaspora, to be Chilean in Sweden, and to be a second generation immigrant.“
– Ofelia Jarl Ortega
BIOS
Ofelia Jarl Ortega (b. 1990) is a Chilean-Swedish choreographer and performer based in Stockholm. Her work centres around vulnerability and femininity, often with a suggestive erotic aesthetic. Questions around power and group dynamics are at the core of her investigations. She holds a diploma from The Royal Swedish Ballet School (2010) and a MA in Choreography from Stockholm University of the Arts (2014). Her work has been presented both nationally and internationally since 2015, at venues such as ImPulsTanz, Vienna; MDT, Stockholm; Arsenic – Contemporary Performing Arts Centre, Lausanne and Moving in November, Helsinki. www.ofeliajarlortega.com
Nina Sandino (She/they) born in Bilwi [“snake in the leaf” in the Mayangna language] on the Nicaraguan Caribbean Coast, a reservoir of diverse cultures, indigenous peoples and ethnic communities.
Nina is an architect and movement artivist, working independently as an eco social designer, choreographer/performer and dance facilitator. Their practice focuses on Afro indigenous queer futurism and ancestral communal knowledge. Nina’s work is moved by the urgency of artistic expression as a political action, and is interested in holistic practices, where rest, pleasure and joy work as radical tools for personal and collective empowerment. Their artistic practice is a joyful rebellion for self-preservation. https://www.ninasandino.com/
Jao Moon
The experience of growing up in the marginalized periphery of Cartagena de Indias Colombia turned Jao Moon into a political body. Living in an environment of constant resistance made them question the predominant social orders, this became the matter of Jao Moon’s work. Jao Moon’s work includes Memory of Dislocation, Everybody can be / Everybody can not be at Ballhaus Naunynstraße. The Lifetime of Fire – Manifestos for a Queer Futures at HAU, HKW Haus der Kulturen der Welt and Anahuacalli Museum CDMX. His collaborations and works have been presented at: Volksbühne Berlin, Sophiensaele Berlin, Kampnagel Hamburg, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Pompidou Center Paris, Neue Nationalgalerie Berlin, Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart Berlin 2024.
