This is a behind-the-scenes look into KDV Dance Ensemble’s first live show, premiered at Funkhaus Berlin on February 1st, 2020.

“Las Casas Invisibles” (Spanish for the ‘invisible houses’) is the first live show of the KDV Ensemble as a multidisciplinary dance company. It discusses the ethos of a constant migration and the feeling of never arriving at the concrete concept of home; a never ending evolution, and a gumbo of paradigms that define the identity of this group of movers. “Las Casas Invisibles” aims to be the archetype of a highly-personal research of Kianí del Valle as a choreographer and migrant for the past 15 years but, most importantly, it’s a reflection of the artistic plight prevalent to this day in age.

Born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Kianí has lived and worked in numerous locations around the world—New York, Montreal, Israel, London, Japan, Russia, and, now, Berlin—over the last 15 years. Her body of work often discusses subjects of displacement, the colonized and de-colonized body and androgyny. Del Valle draws from collaboration between dance and different mediums, such as video, theatre, music, visual art and feature films. Her choreographic craft is formulated through authentic movement, character development and the disruption of classical dance structures and formations. 

With a mesmeric 10-piece troupe of dancers decked out in blooming pinks and ribbed scarlet garments by Asai Takeaway (and styled by Olive Duran), Las Casas Invisibles is an exhilarating  assemblage of movements, each one conveying some dark, complex and innermost human emotion. The masterfulness lies in the familiarity of the gestures—the hugs, the spins, the yawns the grimaces, the stretches, but how they are elongated and twisted, spun up and spit out, uncurling like ruby ribbons, or fleshly innards across the darkened floor. (sleek mag)