Day 3: Holy Motors | Final performance by Kadri Sirel

Holy Motors

The performance invites the audience into a speculative deconstruction site where dancers are working on re-living a dance that they danced in the past. A dance where they experienced an uncontrollable affective state in which the only immediate remedy was to act on the impulse to rhythmically move their bodies. The dancers have written detailed documents describing the conditions, sensations, and imagination that help them re-visit that dance. Their work is triggered by the desire to uncover the conditions in which dance manifests. Therefore, to piece together the body of dance - an entity with an agency and language, to mediate its message.

„Holy Motors“ speculates a dancer’s work environment where dancing and writing reflections based on these dances are the main methods of working. While flirting with the ephemerality of what is known and unknown about dance, the performance searches to highlight the fragility of meanings that dancing in today’s society has. With that, the performance asks, what, in fact, is the dancers’ labour in Western neoliberal capitalism.

NB! The performance is 3 hours long, with the last 45 minutes being open to the audience.

Dancers: Andrea van der Kuil, Can Bora, Gustavo Tomé Garcia, Kadri Sirel, and Stelios Troullakis.

Choreographer: Kadri Sirel

Research supervisor: Dr. Mariella Greil

External mentors: Rosalind Goldberg  and Jörg Piringer