Anjah, the viral dancer for her performances on TransMilenio, seeks to surprise at the Cannes Film Festival

Every day, more than four million citizens mobilize in TransMilenio —according to the District—, each one of them with their eagerness, their problems, their world. However, there are times when paths and passengers' eyes cross. In Bogotá's mass transit system, it usually happens when a day of protest forces citizens to get out of the articulates and walk to their destinations: although each one is a world, at that time they share frustrations, tiredness and a story.

The most recent day of protest that took place in the capital was due to the restriction of the barbecue on motorcycles ordered by the Mayor's Office, in that context, with the buses stopped and passengers opening the doors to get off and walk, some crossed paths with Angela Córdoba, also known as Anjah, a young woman who got on one of the articulated and, from one moment to another, he began to dance. He hung on the tube, raised his leg, leaned it on the open door, took a few turns and got down. One user decided to remove himself from his side, others saw it just seconds and ran their eyes, lest he asked them for some coins. Few understood what was happening, much less realized that, from the station, someone was recording it.

The video was uploaded on TikTok and went viral, in less than 24 hours it had already reached more than 300,000 views and thousands of comments. Paradoxical: although in the recordings the people who stood next to the professional dancer did not look at her, when they saw her on networks, they didn't even blink, although they still didn't understand what was happening. The profile on the short video platform was newly created where it was shared belongs to Leo Carreño, a film director, who had also published two other videos showing Anjah dancing inside an articulated and on a TransMilenio station.

What encouraged that woman to get on the buses, spread her legs, go around, if it wasn't asking for money? A new form of protest? An advertising campaign? No, a prize at the Cannes Film Festival. Infobae Colombia talked to Córdoba and Carreño about what happened that day and accompanied them in one of their particular 'shots' of the massive transport system.

This year, the TikTok platform, with its short and vertical format, became a sponsor of one of the most important film festivals in the world, Cannes, opening a new category, called #TikTokShortFilm, in which content creators can participate by publishing a short film of up to 3 minutes recorded in vertical and on the famous social network.

Carreño is a plastic artist and film director and did not want to miss this opportunity. She teamed up with Anjah, a professional ballet dancer and teacher of corporality, to make the short film that is already participating in the film festival. For the director, the idea is' transgressive ', because the mere fact that a film festival opens a space for short and vertical recordings shows that the future is getting closer and, in the same way, he wanted to break into the daily life of cold Bogotá and its inhabitants with his idea.

“The Cannes call motivated me to make this small production in urban spaces, I joined Anjah for that and the whole media phenomenon emerged from the same platform, which is also an impact that the festival itself seeks. It's a pleasant surprise,” said the director.

For her part, the woman who started dancing “from the belly” —she said— joined her idea and explained to us what her role is in the short film:

Before publishing the final version of 'Delirium', they shared three small pieces of the dances Anjah had done at TransMilenio that were a bomb on the internet. When Córdoba was asked what did it feel like to be at the station and the bus dancing in front of dozens of passengers? , her response was “indifference”, however, she was surprised by what she had caused in networks. Not only were there hundreds of people expressing their admiration for her talent and courage, but also a few violent people who said that if they had seen her “showing everything and spreading their legs”, they would “kick her down”; both sides of the coin are “a clear example of the chaos and crisis in society,” according to the dancer.

The intention of 'Delirium' is to reflect how 'anesthetized' humanity is, each one living under his eagerness, without realizing what is really important. The best thing is that they didn't need extras, actors or a very large team to do it, because the passengers who had the opportunity to cross paths with Anjah that day, didn't take their eyes off their cell phones or the window, completely avoiding any interaction with that strange woman. No one made a comment to him, nor did he approach him to ask him what he was doing.

For Carreño, the reactions of those who were there at the time the videos were recorded correspond to the fact that “they felt a break within a lot of conventional structures and rooted in a routine and rhythms. The impact really is to break with those day-to-day structures that people carry within these massive spaces, it's the unusualness and the unexpected.”

The more than 300,000 views on networks and the video that continues to be shared on TikTok, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram showed Anjah that beyond a transgressive idea for a short film, what they had done was to take away the anesthesia of a lot of people. Now she wanted to see if they would be able to 'take' TransMilenio with her, with dance and improvisation, so she convened a ballet class at a station in the north of Bogotá.

It was 3 o'clock in the afternoon on Wednesday, April 13, when, before the curious eyes of public transport users at the Los Heroes station, three characters were stretching and looking for a baffle to place classical music. That was Angela Córdoba — Anjah — along with two people, Ana and Julián, who, seeing a video of her that went viral, responded to her call for a ballet class at TransMilenio. Coincidentally, they are both dance students, and decided to leave the traditional room to 'dismantle into an articulate' with the professional dancer.

Infobae Colombia arrived to that place and captured the indifference of those who, in their eagerness, passed in front of the dancers running so that they would not leave their bus; also the indifference of the restless glances, even people who seemed to want to dare to dance, but let themselves be overcome by grief. Anjah started with basic stretching and then used the bars of the stations to do the basic positions of classical ballet.

For Julián, having a ballet class at TransMilenio was undoubtedly something that took him out of his comfort zone: “The academy has been responsible for framing students and dancers with aesthetic, physical and spatial canons. He receives you saying 'welcome to this classroom' and puts you on a state of alert, you don't know what comes next.”

'Plie', 'Jeté', 'Tendú' and 'Relevé' were some of the key words that Anjah repeated and the young people followed fully in the middle of the class. However, to get the highest grade, Anjah did not want her pupils to follow a choreography and follow a technique. The grand finale of the class was improvisation at the station and being able to tackle an articulate anyone to dance.

They made the hall of a bus their stage and danced, danced, improvised, in front of an audience that, once again, disappointed with their indifference. While they were taking space, behind them with his cell phone was Leo Carreño, film director, recording everything for TikTok.

Ana, for her part, stressed that Anjah's video and her proposal to occupy this public space with art was special: “It is something that politically transcends and breaks everything everyday, besides that it also poses a risk to stand in front of such hostile audiences as Transmilenio is... is to get off that artistic and elitist pedestal, especially to ballet, to take it to everyone.”

Although from a very young age Ángela Córdoba prepared to be a professional ballet dancer and she succeeded, some stereotypes and rules of that world made her look for other arts that would allow her to express herself through her body, without limits.

Throughout her life she has lived in the United States, Mexico, Cuba and Colombia, discovering sounds and artistic expressions that allowed her to be her, body and soul; all that journey has turned her into a woman who not only teaches classical ballet, in her own way, but also teaches body awareness, yoga and somatics through of his own project called Ki Hai Dance.

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