Sophie Haydee Colindres Zuhlke

I would like to share my practice in progress which I am currently developing doing my Masters in Choreography at Laban in London about "how to dance Pluriculturalism". Pluriculturalism as the possibility of cultures coexisting with each other in one person consequently to two or more inherited cultures and/or additional cultures that one was exposed to in their upbringing. For example one who has nigerian heritage but was brought up in France. Being a pluricultural being most of the times comes with struggle: Bae (2020) is talking about the inner conflict someone faces in their upbringing referring to it as a “(…) pluricultural conflict in the acculturation and assimilation process. (...) they are likely to experience psychological pressure to compromise the heritage culture values with the mainstream culture values, and they also experience stress in the process of reconciling the two cultures”. As Boufoy-Bastick (2012) puts it: “Multicultural ethnicity is pluri-cultural ethnicity in which each person is restricted to the expression of only one of their ethnic identity components. The other ‘fragments’ of their identity have been devalued and eradicated.”
I am using the word pluricultural to describe myself as a vessel for two or more cultures that are in exchange and benefit from each other as I am benefitting from them. Consequently, dance and choreography are tools to make this statement clear and help struggling pluricultural adolescents through identity crisis using phenomenological frameworks. I will be talking in english and will prepare spanish subtitles of the presentation.