Anhelo Collective is an international collective created with friends and artists Laura Ahumada García and Annie Edwards. We decided to come together as result of the pandemic’s isolation, and the way this physical distance was rupturing both our friendship and our creative momentum. In our first studio residency at Ponderosa (Germany), we began exploring physical reunions, meeting each other through our own individual movement languages, reimagining ways of coming together as women, dancers and friends.

This practice of ever-changing togetherness and interdependence framed our debut piece Anhelando which premiered at Resolution Festival 2022 in London. In this piece, we sensitively play around expressions of friendship and dance on stage. Through live improvisation and recorded personal stories we aim for a reconciliation between our collective and individual desires.

Our collective practice and our performance work arises from our interest in transgressing conventions of what dance on stage should look like, or what it serves the artist and the public. We believe that our reunion in Anhelando, proves that it is utterly essential that artists come together not only to keep their creativities alive, as well as their practices, but also to keep alive friendships and relationships that have brought us together. 

Our practice is probably one of finding ways to physically and artistically support each other throughout a dance performance. Our journey on stage tackles the questions: how to be together? how to create space and connections and proximity with each other? how to collectively become a supportive cell for our individual selves?

What do we resist together? Starting from acknowledging our differences and distances, difficulties and impossibilities, we resist through the collective inhabiting of a performance space in movement as friends and artists. We decide to be there and to commit to our practice. We give our friendship a place in this world. Becoming an insightful practice and craft to stay aware, to listen closely, to respond and react, and to simply stay. Once we have found a holding position, or a stillness, the stage becomes a frame, an image, a moment resisting to be washed away.