Iris Omari Ansong is a Vienna-based dancer and performer working at the intersection of the arts and culture sector. Her artistic work is dedicated to intertwining topics like emancipation, pleasure, vulnerability and decoloniality with her knowledge of dance, movement and social sciences. In the course of her dance studies at Music und Art University Vienna, she wrote a thesis about the plurality of dance forms and their hierarchization in the European dance scape from a decolonial perspective.
'Hierarchy of Dances - An Decolonial Analysis of Hierarchical Structures in the European Dance Scape'
"In the course of a critical examination, dominant representations of dance in Europe were examined. Which forms they display and which dances are overshadowed was analyzed and the question of interconnections with persisting effects of colonialism, and to what extent these are reflected in existing exclusions, racisms and hegemonies in that cosmos of dance, was raised. This research is an attempt to show the stances of different dance forms, and with them the social position of the people participating in them. What has a socially recognized value is reflected in institutions and vice versa. The work addresses a blind spot in the collective engagement with the omnipresent topic of diversity and social justice by approaching the dominance of specific dance forms and the accompanying hierarchization of dance styles as a central problem."