20070503

production file (English)

Dancing the circular todeng waltz is a dance + text performance based on a conjunction of two media conveying meaning in different ways.

In the fiction of the text, the protagonist finds a way to re-root himself into the toxic ground by falling back on a ritualistic dance form. The dance on stage is articulated to the text and relies on the want for language of the body.

This performance tells a story about potential future, about the transformation of bodies and environments, dominated but uncontrolled by technoscience. One could call it science fiction, fable or philosophical tale.

Dancing the circular todeng waltz is a combination of projected text, dance and music colliding in a minimal set-up. The focal point of this performance is the tension between the movements of the dancer and written text, questioning the relation of dance to narration and underlining how the body is read and deciphered.

Its device invites to create individual strategies to perceive and interpret the performance as a whole, and by combining the evocative strength of literature and the emotional physicality of dance, stimulates unexpected imaginations.

The text in dancing the circular todeng waltz tells a story of transformation and conjuration, an eerie quest in a potential future where the living has been modified by a toxic surrounding. The created universe involves a specific physicality and relations to surrounding that resonate with the staged dance.

The dance aesthetics is based on a conception of dance as an apex of human culture – beyond the modern concept of art – as much as a personal laboratory. This allows building an almost ritualistic dance from minimal and sensitive re-organisations inside the body, a steady process of oscillation.