Litchi Ly Friedrich is an interdisciplinary artist and curator whose practice revolves around diasporic dance and artistic practices. Her dance experience is mostly rooted in breaking, New Way Vogue, as well contemporary dance and is largely self-taught. She received a Bachelor of the Arts in Ceramic Design from Central Saint Martins, London and a Master of the Arts from the Dutch Institute in 2021, where she honed in her practice around performance and connecting it to critical theory.
Amongst some works, she has choreographed for Deichtorhallen’s opening for Jacolby Satterwhite, the performance Periphery with Kameron Locke and Black Pearl de Almeida, the artistic group-research project Traces of Resistance, as well as performances at Savvy Contemporary, Heizhaus PSR, Hans-Otto Theater, Hellerau European Centre of Performing Arts, and others. She has also dances for choreographers such as Joanna Tischkau, GoPlastic Dance Company, Fatoumata Camara and Sophie Yukiko Hasters.
She has been a part of the House of Saint Laurent since 2018, a lot of her work is closely linked to providing access and space, as well as creating bridges between community and institutions. These take place in the forms of movement workshops, open sessions, panel talks and others.Collaborating closely with Georgina Philp and other house members, they have curated and organised The X-Rated Ball at Hygiene Museum Dresden, Give Me Life: The Vjuan Allure celebration at Volksbühne, Pump into the Future Ball at Ruhrtriennale, The Saint Summer Take over funded by Culture Moves Europe. This year they have been able to host a panel talk at NYU with support by the Swiss & German embassies to share their experience about European Ballroom for the first time in New York City.
Currently she is co-curating the second year of the Pump Create Elevate program at Haus Cultures of the World, Berlin. With Georgina Philp, they have received the ‘Hauptstadtkulturfonds’ and are hosted by HAU for their Fierce Foundations Festival, where the second European House Lives Matter conference will take place, panel talks, workshops and a Ball.
Born in Lima, Peru, Amelia Uzategui Bonilla has worked in dance and performance since 2007, with experiences in the USA, South America and Europe. They have collaborated with innovative artists such as Marina Abramović, Anna Halprin and Tino Sehgal amongst others, and currently perform with Elsa Artmann and Zwoisy Mears-Clarke in Germany and NAKA Dance Theater in the United States.
Amelia teaches contemporary dance techniques and decolonial approaches to dance research from a migrant, feminist perspective at the Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts, from where they completed an MA in Contemporary Dance Education, Amelia has also lectured at universities in the United States, Peru and at the SNDO Amsterdam. Additionally, they earned a BFA in Dance with Scholastic Distinction from Juilliard in 2007.
Engaged in building infrastructures for freelance dance artists, Amelia co-founded and directed the ID_Tanzhaus Frankfurt Rhein-Main between 2021 and 2023, establishing programs that support artists in the areas of press and production. In 2024, they co-founded T.I.A. dance productions with Hannah Dewor, Lilian Korner, and Bex Pattison, an independent dance company researching Aesthetics of Access and inclusive educational programs from an intersectional lens. Amelia’s choreographic work deals with movement languages from Peru’s afro-indigenous history, coloniality, contemporary forms of discrimination, topics of diaspora, somatics, artistic activism and the empowerment and collective liberation of queer, disabled and BiPoC people.
Their research has been published and presented in theater and dance studies contexts. As a choreographer, Amelia has produced four state-funded productions in Germany, including co-productions with Künstler*innenhaus Mousonturm and the Implantieren Festival and residencies at HELLERAU and PACT Zollverein (with Mears-Clarke). Amelia recently attended the MANCC Choreographic Center at the University of Florida with NAKA Dance Theater as an artist in residence.