RADICAL DANCE SERIES engages in primal-ordinary movement which everybody practices and knows from everyday life. Through collectively standing, walking, sitting and laying, the project series picks out the origin of its radical development of thought (originating from the Latin word „radix“, the root).
So it’s „back to the roots“ and „let’s get back together!“
Jump in, have fun and be part of this collective project.

copyright @TERESA ROSENKRANTZ

The Corona pandemic and the necessity of physical distancing have created massive change regarding bodily habituality and social perception. Legal requirements have caused bodily withdrawal from public space in addition to the fact that bodily movement and encounter have been widely contained and relocated to the private space. Simultaneously, the necessity of physical distancing has allowed for adapted performances, which offer chofeographic-creative potential that inspires alternative perception and modes of behavior. The RADICAL DANCE SERIES’s dancers experiment with the possibilities of urban-collaborative methodologies, reflecting on how (post)-pandemic transformation and social-digital adaption shapes and arranges the everyday course of life within Hamburg.

The radical component of the dance series’ artistic dance praxis relates to the primal character of choreography and its movement practices. In standing, walking, sitting and laying down, the dancers interrupt everyday urban life. In pausing, they put alternative-creative possibilities of moving and encountering to the test. Simultaneously, the RADICAL DANCE SERIES explore the choreographic practice of occupying. Through standing, walking, siting and laying down they create choreographic space and scope of development apart from prevailing and experiential-distanced patterns of moving and encountering. The project series aims at creating dance-based spaces of encounter, where joint visions of everyday urban living can actually be put to the test collectively in and through dancing.

The way that people interact with one another has changed extensively as of the beginning of 2020. Simultaneously, the situation of radical change caused by Corona and its practices of physical distancing are strongly linked to the contemporary phenomena of mediated sociality and the constant innovation of digital technology. These technologies transform the materialities of body, movement and encounter and re-negotiate them. Taking this as its starting point, RADICAL DANCE SERIES picks out the transformed analog-digital normality of cultural participation as its central theme. In addition to spontaneous interventions and joint dance-routes through urban space with passer-bys, the RADICAL DANCE SERIES present Augmented Reality (AR) Technologies.

With the AR-Technologies the reality of the RADICAL DANCE SERIES is expanded and amplified. Within the real proximity of the performance and it’s dancers, the audience digitally experience selected entities of the choreographic material. A digital-dancing Avatar invites the audience to participate and be part of the project series with basic movement instructions. Spontaneous choreographies evolve that integrate themselves within the specific, urban characteristics of Hamburg. The AR-Choreographies are outright imaginary, but do surface on the mobile phones that the audience are essentially holding in their hands. 

Coincidental passer-bys can also become the project series’ audience. The series’ QR-Codes are positioned at different stations within the three routes and can be easily scanned during the performances, but also after the event at designated stations. The passer-bys are introduced to choreographic scores that can be seen, heard and jointly danced.