Phyllis Akinyi
Phyllis Akinyi (1987, Copenhagen) is a Danish-Kenyan dancer, choreographer, performance artist, and dance researcher. She works within the realm of flamenco and has spent many years researching and highlighting its African and diasporic expressions. Her artistic practice centers a continuous investigation of the ‘betwixt and between’ - researching entanglements of movement, culture, and identity, from an anthropological lens of bodies caught in cultural ‘in-betweens’.
Akinyi plays with stretching the (imagined) limitations of flamenco, both in time, space, sound and movement, often taking flamenco on a journey away from the traditional stage and into a site-specific and/or durational performance frame - a frame she calls Spatial Listening, where flamenco meets performance art, Africanist Spirituality, and sonic movement.
Her work is represented on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean in various forms; performance, teaching, lectures, and lab sessions, and her interdisciplinary approach has lead her to wear many hats - currently including; artistic director of Diasporic Dimensions - a dance/ performance association, co-editor of the anthology trilogy ‘Afro-Nordic Perspectives on Performance’, and artist council for Copenhagen based artist residency HAUT. Akinyi lives between Madrid and Copenhagen.