Karina Villafan
Getting Tropical worst chapter
Getting Tropical is a performance that merges movement, text and social media devices, in an imaginary post-catastrophic scenario that takes place in the tropics of a fictional world. Sometimes very similar to Brazil, or to a super fictional Brazil, or to the 'Brazil pra gringo ver'. Getting Tropical proposes to critically think on its foundation myth, as a European creation that has been perpetuated and re-enforced until today as an earthly and tropical paradise and re-present it as an image of horror, apocalyptic in nature.
For this, Karina develops transgressive and performative practices of re-invention, based on actions of negotiation, false domestication, and disidentification, which we call: Strategies of Cracks.
Getting Tropical is the second performance developed from the Getting Worse-series. An ongoing research about the end of the worlds which started in the context of Karina’s BA in SNDO - School for New Dance Development and was presented as a side A in ISO gallery (Getting worse, 2020) and as a side B in Frascati Theatre, 2021.
Performers
Clara Saito, Karina Villafan, Lara Santos
Bio
Karina Villafan is an artist from Rio de Janeiro, based in Amsterdam since 2017. Karina or Karin, is a choreographer and performer, working in contexts such as artist residencies, educational projects and independent spaces focused on performing arts and critical thinking. She studied contemporary dance in Angel Vianna, Rio de Janeiro (2016) and later obtained a bachelor's degree in Choreography at the School for New Dance Development in the Amsterdam University of the Arts (2021).
In the past works, Karina dealt with different interests such as: sex politics and sex work (Sugarterrorism, 2018), strategies to answer situations of oppression through art (I am manifesto, 2019), re-telling Dutch narratives in a spiritualist, trash, epic and decolonial perspective (The Cape of Storms, 2019), the ends of the worlds (Getting worse, 2020 & Getting Tropical, 2021) and the mainstream lesbian films stereotypes (Kim, we need to talk, 2021).
In her artistic practice Karina has been busy in the last 2 years researching a ‘twisted entertainment’ way of making: the playing of conventions and cliches with a humoristic and ironic approach on the surface in order to create space for criticism on a deep level.
