Performance Night is a project to support and make visible creative processes for the performing arts in Chile. The project was started in 2023 by the performing artist Varinia Canto Vila under the format of a program carried out at the Centro deExtension from the National Institute, CEINA. This programming extended from May to December 2023 in 7 sessions. The curatorship programming was not governed by thematic axes but by two principles: 1. to support creative processes (and not finished works) and 2. to support projects that were not awarded by the Chilean national funds (Fondart). These two principles were designed to respond to the prevailing need of dance and performance artists and collectives in Chile who work without any support and whose creative processes are affected by not being able to find places to work or that can finance their rent.
Thus, during the year 2023, Performance Night was conceived as a residency program, where for 1 month, 3 artists/collectives worked in Sala Expo 1 and in Sala Expo 2 (located on the underground floor of the building of the Extension Center of the National Institute, CEINA), with the idea that at the end of the work month, their creative processes would be opened to the public. The samples were works in progress and lasted maximum 25 minutes each, which allowed to generate an approximately 75′ event of performance and contemporary dance samples.
At the end of December 2023, Noche de Performance ended its collaboration with CEINA and became a collective self-managed of artists whose mission is to provide visibility and support for creative proposals around performance. Visibility now consists of generating a schedule of works in progress that do not have Fondart financing. As for the residencies, due to the lack of spaces where they can be held, Performance Night will leave them in charge of the artists/collectives and concentrate only on supporting the moment of visibility to an audience.
Performance Night collective today is made up of scenic artist Ale Ferreira Olivares; visual and media artist Alejandro Orellana; visual artist and literary editor Adolfo Carrasco and performing artist Varinia Canto Vila. Since 2024, it has been projected in an itinerant format, as a one-time programmatic proposal lasting one day, thus inhabiting different places in Santiago de Chile.
It reinvents itself as a platform for cultural activism that accommodates independent and experimental proposals that do not seek box office success as an added value. It aims to be a space for meeting and dialogue that nourishes the cultural fabric of Santiago from other ways of doing things.
What are we looking for:
- Performance Night project seeks exhibition venues to schedule the moment of visibility of the artists’ works in the process of creation.
What do we need:
- At least 3 small rooms or 1 very large room (more than 15 meters x 15 meters) or a large space in which the 3 creative works that can be programmed in an evening schedule.
- Have basic technical material such as: sound table, speakers, video projector and microphones.
- Being able to occupy the exhibition spaces of the works from early in the morning so that both artists and the Performance Night collective can prepare the exhibition.
- Charge an entrance fee of no more than 3,000 pesos, and give at least 70% of the borderó to the artists.
What we offer:
- Program independent artists from the dance and performance scene in Santiago and regions.
- Influx of a loyal audience to the Performance Nights, with the potential to continue growing.