Awa is an inflatable object designed for a haptic exploration. Playing with an unstable volume of air which shifts quickly from point to point, the performer exchanges kinetic energy with Awa. The sculpture was created with ultra-lightweight material in order to respond to a every gesture of the movers. In turn, its behavior is unpredictable, giving rise to a kinesthetic dialogue.

The work was first presented at Raw Dates #7, iii project space, The Hague and performed by Ludmila Rodrigues & Fazle Shairmahomed, on March 19th, 2022. As an improvisation session, the performance was accompanied by Harald Austbø (cello, voice, human beatbox) and Onno Govaert (drums, percussion).

Fazle Shairmahomed is a performance artist, dancer, healer and community organizer creating decolonizing rituals. Ludmila and Fazle have been collaborating in other performative projects since 2013. In this performance they improvised possible bodily and spatial relations in which the object mutates, sometimes revealing and other times engulfing the performers’ bodies. This movement was accompanied by the live music of Austbø and Govaert, which was also reflecting on the dynamics of the bodies in the space.

Raw Dates is an interdisciplinary improvisation series in iii’s program organized by Wen Chin Fu and Riccardo Marogna. Raw Dates aims to open a playground for a group of performers/improvisers to present unexpected and mixed ‘blind date’ lineups in the broadest multi-disciplinary sense. Lineups are social and artistic experiments at work. The audience is presented with a “work-in-progress” scenario, the process of real-time creation. The curators, performers and the audience themselves are invited to take their chances, risks, and trust the results.

Awa means “round” in Tupi-Guarani language.
With thanks to Wen Chin Fu and Mike Rijnierse.