2020

Dancing in the dark a.k.a For Me

choreographer and DANCER

“The feeling that you get when you are at a club and the music is so good that you need to find a place for yourself.

You have to have a moment for yourself.

You need to be alone with everybody.”

A dancer having a moment for herself and the music. It’s about letting go and following the feeling that the music gives you. It’s about getting lost in the music and forgetting yourself at the same time as you feel more like yourself.

Dancing in the dark a.k.a. For Me is a solo dance performance that is performed in a corner of a dark room. It highlights the dancer's experiences at a club, how dance is an extension of one's identity, and how the club environment functions as a place for self-realization: to embody what cannot be said and the meaning that dance has for its practitioners.

The audience is invited to experience a club night from a dancer's perspective. The dancer shares the stage with the audience where everyone is free to move as they wish during the performance. 

The main theme of the piece is to reclaim the performer’s authority on stage. It’s about a strive for holding on to your autonomy as a dancer while being on stage and having control and listening to yourself while performing. The piece is about trying to recreate a dancer’s personal dance experience at a house club with just a dancer and music and at the same time inviting an audience to see it. It’s an attempt to create understanding on the personal meaning that dance has for the dancer and also broaden the view on what house dance is.

A vernacular dance style and cultural practice as a starting point, the piece creates a common reference frame for the dancer and the audience. Its aim is to bridge the gap between performing arts and vernacular practices. Since the dancer and the audience share the stage the piece also studies the possibilities of the audience being a part of the performance and in that way having an embodied experience of the worldmaking created on stage.

Duration: 25 minutes

Music edit: D Soulstream

T-shirt design: Caroline Suinner

Residency support: Danscentrum Stockholm

Dans.hall/Site/specific festival 2019

Site/specific festival 2020