December 9 – 18: Dance is Ancient / Frédéric Gies (FR/SE) m.fl.

Dance is Ancient is a durational event that places experimental dance and techno music at its center. Conceived by Frédéric Gies around his most recent dance works, the event brings together other artists such as the Djs Fiedel, Johanna Schneider, Nadja Chatti and Dj City, the visual artist Anton Stoianov, the film director Gavin Youngs, the lighting designer Thomas Zamolo, and the dancers Anna Pehrsson, Samuel Draper, Pavle Heidler, Louise Dahl and Philip Berlin.

Dance is Ancient consists of performances, exhibitions, workshops and public space actions. The aim is to create a space for experiencing and experimenting with alternative ways of moving singularly and collectively, with alternative forms of embodiment, presence and relations. Bridging dance and somatic practices with techno music and clubbing as well as direct action, it also reformulates the contract of the theatre/performance space by inviting to alternative modes of implication for the audience.

In Stockholm it takes place at Weld, Studio Mossutställningar and KTH R1 Experimental Performace Space and Presence Lab. In Gothenburg, the event is organized by Skogen and hosted at Röda Sten, Danscentrum and Folk. In both cities, the event will close with a new dance performance by Frédéric Gies, in collaboration with Fiedel and Anton Stoianov, also called Dance is Ancient.

See full programme here

Dance is Ancient at Weld – Programme

Admission fee for each event: 120 kr (student 100 kr)
Book:
book.weld.se

Dec 9 at 7pm – 10.40pm

GOOD GIRLS GO TO HEAVEN, BAD GIRLS GO EVERYWHERE
Frédéric Gies + Fiedel + Anton Stoianov

Frédéric Gies invites you to join a 3 hours and 38 minutes experiment, for which he collaborates with the dj Fiedel and the visual artist Anton Stoianov. Frédéric Gies fell in love with Fiedel’s work, dancing many times to his sets in Berlin at Berghain, where Fiedel is resident.

Fiedel started to dj publicly in the underground techno scene in the mid 90’s, on Mondays at a club called Subversiv. He is also part of MMM, a collaboration between him and Errorsmith. Their track “Donna” is considered a much played techno classic. In fall 2012 Fiedel started his own label called ‘Fiedelone’ to release his solo productions.

Berlin was also the meeting point for Frédéric and Anton Stoianov, when the two of them were regulars at the mythical Basso, a place where many artists were mingling, working and partying together. They also shared many nights and days on Berghain’s dance floor. Frédéric proposed Anton to collaborate on this project after seeing his large-scale abstract paintings, made without paint or pigment, but of worn cotton socks.

The audience is kindly asked to come at the opening time of the experiment and not later.

Concept and dance: Frédéric Gies
DJ: Fiedel
Floor installation: Anton Stoianov
Production: Weld
Thanks to Paz Rojo

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Dec 10 at 7pm – 9.45pm

AT THE BOTTOM LEFT CORNER + RIBBON DANCE (2015)
Frédéric Gies + Anna Pehrsson + Fiedel

Frédéric Gies and Anna Pehrsson invite you to a 2h44min evening of dance, infused with the contagious beats of the techno set created by Fiedel for the occasion. During this evening, Anna and Frédéric will dance their At the bottom left corner, and Frédéric his Ribbon dance. Both dances, which are dances of the in-between (in-between bodies, objects and histories) make manifest in two different yet connected ways the drives and forces that set off bodies or things in movement and the movement potential to self- generate, like a motor activated by its own energy. Although they inevitably communicate something else, these dances don’t seek to communicate anything but themselves and the subterraneous currents that traverse them.

At the bottom left corner

Dance: Frédéric Gies and Anna Pehrsson
DJ: Fiedel
Lighting design: Thomas Zamolo
Tights: Such a Sally

Ribbon dance
Dance: Frédéric Gies
DJ: Fiedel
Research collaborator: Carla Bottiglieri
Ribbon ready made: Anton Stoianov
Lighting design: Thomas Zamolo
Thanks to: Ulrika Berg, Philip Berlin, Cristina Caprioli
Special thanks to: a techno and dance lover called Slaven Rupic, dancers from Senegal whose names remain unknown, a dancer from the US called Trisha Brown

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Dec 11 at 7pm – 8pm

DAD & SON (Premiere)
Frédéric Gies + Samuel Draper

In the dance performance Dad & Son, Samuel Draper and Frédéric Gies expose and celebrate an unorthodox form of kinship rather than a normative, biological relationship while dancing together in an almost pitch dark room to the beats of techno music. If the title of the performance can be interpreted as a wink to a gay form of sexual relationship, it exceeds this specific association, as it actually refers to another form of relationship the two dancers have agreed upon and live in the frame of their created surrogate family. The performance neither represents nor comments on the nature of this relationship, but rather makes visible unutterable bounds.

Dance: Frédéric Gies, Samuel Draper
DJ: Fiedel
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Dec 18 at 11am–9pm

DANCE IS ANCIENT
Frédéric Gies + Fiedel + Anton Stoianov

The durational performance Dance is Ancient (ten hours long) is conceived as a dance rite, performed and facilitated by Frédéric Gies, who dances to the infectious techno beats of Fiedel who plays live for the occasion, around a totemic sculpture created by Anton Stoianov. The space in which it takes place is thought neither as a club, nor as a theatre/performance space, if not thought as both or as a space from another kind. The audience is invited to experience, spend time and engage with Fiedel’s compound of sounds, beats and intensities, and with Frédéric Gies’ dance. This dance, which addresses all together the bodily, perceptual, sensual, social, emotional and spiritual dimensions of the experience of dancing, summons up ghosts of other dancers and dances. It elicits and unleashes fathomless and primal forces that traverse the depths of dancing bodies and invokes faunlike, panic figures. It engenders forms that shape-shift into each other. Dance is Ancient opens up a space for a multiplicity of individual and collective movements yet to be written and un- written.

Dance: Frédéric Gies
DJ: Fiedel
Totem: Anton Stoianov
Lights: Thomas Zamolo

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Concept, programme and organization: Frédéric Gies
Mentoring and coordination support: Anna Grip
Administration: The Artist Cooperative Interim Kultur
Coproduced by Weld and Skogen, with the support of Röda Sten
Funded by Kulturrådet

Thanks to UNIARTS for the support of Frédéric Gies research project in which Dance is ancient originated.