Residency of Katrīna Dūka, hosted by International Festival of Contemporary Theatre “Homo Novus” in partnership with ANTI – Contemporary Arts Festival & Kanuti Gildi SAAL
From May to September 2024, Latvian theatre maker Katrīna Dūka was part of an EFFEA Residency, where she worked with a group of 8 local queer dance enthusiasts to learn the basics of Argentine tango. Their aim was to (re)discover the dance through their own lens of acceptance, respect, and collaboration.
Together, we set out to learn the basics of Argentine tango—not to replicate it, but to rediscover it, to reimagine what a queer tango could look and feel like here, in Latvia. We consciously resisted importing ideas from places where such a tradition exists. Instead, we began with an open question: what might queer tango mean here, for us? Tango, at its heart, is a conversation of power and intimacy—an intricate dance of leading and following, performed in a close embrace, and mostly improvised. As a group, we were interested in expanding the boundaries and tradition that tango carries within itself. We asked ourselves: Could we experiment with co-leading and co-following, moving beyond the binary roles that often define the dance? What we discovered was not only a dance but also a metaphor: rehearsing the steps in the studio became a rehearsal for new ways of being together, for imagining new social realities. These rehearsals challenged us in unexpected ways. For some, it was the first time dancing with a same-sex partner. For others, the idea of performing in public in these roles carried a brave, almost defiant weight. Participants reflected on the courage it took to step into this space, to claim this freedom and express it for an audience. The studio space (at times nomadic and unusual) became a space of collective learning, vulnerability, and joy. Each misstep, each moment of synchronicity, felt like an act of resistance and renewal. We weren’t just learning tango; we were creating a dialogue—one that intertwined bodies, histories, and possibilities. Looking back, this process was about much more than dance. It was about imagining and embodying a different kind of future, one step at a time.
During the International Festival of Contemporary Theatre “Homo Novus”, Queer Tango Club had its first public night, followed by a workshop open to all. The project team introduced basic steps and a simple choreography from the performance. Later in September, Katrīna Dūka went to ANTI to participate in an artist talk introducing the project, process and results to the local audience. She concluded with a micro residency at Kanuti Gildi SAAL where she took time to reflect on the process and led 2 workshops for the local dance community in collaboration with TantsuRUUM in Tallinn, Estonia.
The Queer Tango Club is selected for the Baltic Take Over festival which will take place in April 2025 in Turku, Finland. Katrīna Dūka together with a part of the original group will create a new version of the piece with the local queer community in Turku.
Photos: Aivars Ivbulis, Katrīna Dūka, Akseli Muraja