DOWL

variants: or dowle ˈdau̇ (ə)l
now dialectal, England
: feathery or woolly down : filament

"Dance, dance, Otherwise We"re Lost"
Pina Bausch

‘In July 1518 the inhabitants of Strasbourg (then part of the Holy Roman Empire) were
struck by a sudden and seemingly uncontrolled urge to dance. The hysteria began when a woman, known as Mrs. Troffea, stepped out into the street and in silence began to twist,turn and shake.’

From where did the outbursts of collective jerky dance, in the time of the plague, come from and what, or how can we understand them in the situation we are in today? We write DOWL with a common dance, which uses, interweaves, thus twirls diverse forms of collective choreography - from unison as a classicist form of dance, through rave, folklore, to decoding of visual representations of dance macabre and bio-geometry - patterns of organic movement, to invoke composite movement of the collective body. What and how did the space of (physical) togetherness mean to us in 2021 (when DOWL premiered) and in 2024? This work is the subject of dance, but also of invocation, constructed through shaping of the geometry of the affective pressure we find between bodies. This creates an experiential space for emotional and cognitive processing of increased intensity within the experience of community.

Credits:

Choreography: Sonja Pregrad
Performers: Ivana Bojanić, Viktoria Bubalo, Lana Hosni, Anna Javoran, Ana Mrak, Eva Priečková
Music: Nika Pećarina
Costumes, Production, Support: Tea Kantoci
Performance was supported using public fundings by the Slovak Arts Council.