Duty Free: Benman Was Here

Free
Dance
Performance

The Old GMC Complex
First Floor, GMC Building

20th December - 21st December
12:00 PM - 12:30 PM

20th December - 21st December
04:00 PM - 04:30 PM

Bboy Benman, in his practice, draws on the everyday wins of being embedded within hip-hop culture. Originating in Black and Latino communities in 1970s New York, hip hop situates deeply personal expression, whether that is through the building blocks of breaking or in the practice of ‘tagging’, where artists paint their names or symbols on public surfaces within densely populated urban spaces, feeding off community interaction. Hip hop gestures to simple human needs, a desire to be heard and to be seen. Bboy Benman draws on its explosive energy, drawing on breaking and graffiti to propose performative assertions of presence and identity, both in movement and image.

The performance will be followed by workshops that offer participants an embodied understanding of hip hop culture and movement.

Conceptualised as part of Duty Free curated by Ranjana Dave.

A medical college. The human body. You might expect examination, diagnosis and treatment, but Duty Free serves up movement encounters and sensorial discoveries. Rather like its namesake at the airport, it sets itself up as a space of wonder and curiosity. Over eight days, three dance artists take turns inhabiting a riverfront verandah in the Old Goa Medical College building, making it both studio and stage.

Duty Free is open through the day, functioning as an exhibition space and embodied archive, interspersing the behind-the-scenes labour of dance – improvisation, repetition, failure – with performances and workshops at scheduled intervals. Its artists set up interactions that are tactile, embodied, textual and aural, offering movement prompts and traces of their practice for you to engage with.

Duty Free is commissioned by Serendipity Arts for Serendipity Arts Festival 2025.

Performer: Bboy Ben
Scenographer: Sukanya Ghosh