Luisa Fernanda Alfonso (CL)
Estefanía Álvarez Ramírez (CL)
Quinceañeras
From girl to woman: a 15th birthday is celebrated in style in Latin America. In Quinceañeras, Luisa Alfonso and Estefanía Álvarez Ramírez examine this ritual and transform it into an intimate, exuberant celebration of femininity and friendship.
The celebration itself has its origins in European debutante balls and, combined with indigenous rites of passage, serves as an example of how imposed colonial traditions are reappropriated and transformed into forms of empowerment. Luisa and Estefanía explore how traditions can be both restrictive and liberating.
What does it mean to come of age within a system of imposed rituals, and how can these rituals be rewritten as forms of resistance and self-affirmation? As Colombian artists living in Europe, Estefanía and Luisa approach this theme from the perspective of migrants. Their friendship fuelled their creative process: a space of trust, care and playfulness in which they explore new forms of female representation. Through dance, music and performative rituals, they transform the theatre into a hybrid space where excess, emotion, nostalgia and absence are interwoven.
Luisa Fernanda Alfonso (CL)
Luisa Fernanda Alfonso is a Colombian dancer living in Berlin. She graduated from the Limón Professional Studies Program in New York City, the B.A. in Dance at the Folkwang University in Essen and the M.A. SODA at HZT in Berlin. She approaches dance and performance as a carefully orchestrated artificial theatrical apparatus.
Estefanía Álvarez Ramírez (CL)
Estefanía Álvarez Ramírez is a dancer, performer, and maker from Medellín, Colombia. She studied architecture in Colombia from 2010 to 2014. In 2019, she received a Bachelor in Dance from the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen, and in 2021 a Master's degree in Dance from P.A.R.T.S. in Brussels. In the past, her personal research has been driven by the notions of ‘built’ and ‘unbuilt’ constructions: an interweaving of craftspersonship, sentimentality and fiction. Imagery, nostalgia, humour and a dance departing from emotionality and technique are central to her artistic practice.
She has collaborated with Kinga Jaczewska, Geert Belpaeme, Bosse Provoost and Ezra Veldhuis, Carly Rae Heathcote, Ode de Kort, Keren Kraizer, Lydia McGlinchey, Leila Hekmat, Lena Grossmann and Spazio Cura by Thorben Gröbel,
among others. Since 2016 she collaborates with Luisa Fernanda Alfonso.
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