Introducing About to Dance - project

A word dance brings up many questions, thoughts, meanings, expectations, opinions, ideals, rules and regulations, permissions, gender/sex and age restrictions etc. One person may dance, the other one may not. Another person finds dance as a source for creativity and self expression. And another one thinks that only some people with certain kind of outfit or physical appearance are allowed to dance, or only when following certain aesthetic ideals. One prohibits dancing, the other thinks dance is poetry, third one looses weight by dancing, the fourth person describes dancing stupid or useless and the fifth one may see all moving as dance..
Where does dance happen? In autumn 2007 14 Finnish politicians out from 16 said that dance can happen anywhere or everywhere.

A big part of socialization happens through rules and rituals around the body and through social expectations. Body and embodiment are important subjects in social research, through focusing on the body, gestures and moving we can learn a lot about society.
How is that then? How are we embodying our lives and living as moving beings? How do we meet each other? How are we moved by others? How are we dancing/moving/choreographying our lives? how is society choreographed, keeps being danced choreographed by us and by our choice making.

In a long term art project About to Dance meetings and actions have moved out from theater space to street environment and other public sites. Meeting people face to face in public realm has opened possibilities to contemplate dance and embodiment in society as well as different performative aspects, alternative forms of performance and levels of communication.

In About to dance- street interviews I together with a video artist have stopped people in the streets to ask questions about life and dance from them. The answers for my questions have been done by moving and dancing in front of a videocamera. To these questions have answered adult people of different age, background in different streets, parks, market places, parking lots, in different towns and cities in Finland and other countries eg. Spain, Russia, Czech Republic, United States and Norway.

Sometimes during the making of the About to Dance interviews some people have thought that as a professional dancer I could do "every movement in the world very well." They found it difficult to teach me a movement or a movement phrase. It seemed that as a professional dancer I had become the owner of dance (for them). I have tried to emphasize that people have their own experiences and ideas of dance and that is where the focus in this project is.

The edited (mostly silent) videos of the these interviews have been shown on different occasions as a catalyst for discussion or in performance and on different sites and situations etc. I have also started movement/dance workshops with different kind of groups by showing first one About to Dance-video. People have talked about their ideas, thoughts and memories of dance and dancing, also about their bodies and experiences of moving.

When watching the About to dance- videos it is easy to identify with the people moving and dancing in them. The videos can also be seen as documentaries & descriptions of contemporary time/life. They bring out similarities, differences and uniqueness in/of people. Videos also offer space and time to contemplate ones own thoughts and ideas related to dance, embodiment and performativity in this society.

Let´s end this with questions, of which the last 3 are the ones  asked from the people in the videos.
What is spontaneity?
What is a meeting?

From the word LIFE what movement comes to your mind?

From the word DANCE what movement comes to your mind

What movement would you like to teach me?

LINKS TO VIDEOS:

About to Dance, swing of politics, 2008 ( with Finnish politicians):  https://youtu.be/SaH1Op3y7T0