Cultural tip on SDG 17: Performance about hopeful transnational partnerships
- 2022-12-23
- Janna Degener-Storr
The dance theatre performance ‘BE-LONGING’ that features two award-winning actors shows what healthy trans-national partnerships can look like.
Goal 17 of the UN Sustainable Development Goals stands for ‘Partnerships for the Goals’. The theatre project of the Tete Adehyemma Dance Theatre from Ghana and the from Münster addresses this goal. The world BELONGs together. However, the countries from the Global South are still LONGING to participate more.
Based on this topic, dialogues, stand-up performances, music and choreographies were created in the trans-national project. The different formats are used to tell interwoven stories about Africa and Europe, about the past and the present. One example of this is the paradoxical scene about the coastal city Cape Coast in Ghana: tourists nowadays love to use their smartphones to take photos of cells in the former slave fortress Cape Coast Castle. There is also the dialogue between Abena and Sebastian. He is a development worker from the North who earns far more than his local colleagues, who have the same skills. The locals treat him like a hero, and he soon believes so himself. The thought-provoking dialogue addresses prejudices and fixed ways of thinking that must be de-colonised.
‘Communication across borders’ is about the role of communication formats for successful partnership and participation. are not available to everyone, even in times of globalisation and technological progress. To reinforce the connection between the North and the South must remain a desired project.