One morning you look at a cloud and see a figure. You realize that this figure is in you, so you figure you better make friends. The following day you see more figures, figures everywhere! You make friends with all of them, and they become your invisible posse. They guide you, and it doesn’t take long before you are totally relying on them. You can’t live without them anymore.
Some days, though, they are mean to you, they manipulate, mislead or even ghost you. On those days you suspect them to be double agents. And you start to doubt whether they are your invisible friends, or the invisible friends of somebody else.
feelings aims to be a setting and a dance where feelings are opaque and plastic. Where forms of feelings and feelings of forms overlap, and where it is unclear if what you feel is coming from you or to you. feelings is performed by 5 - 8 dancers and takes place in a setting developed with Simon Asencio to original music by Dean Blunt.
feelings is one part of analysis: a long term research project into the politics of feeling(s). analysis is rooted in dance and unfolds in various formats, contexts and collaborations. analysis asks questions about the relations between subjects and feelings. Be it the feelings “of” subjects themselves or “of” others. analysis starts from the suppositions that feelings are opaque rather than transparent, mediated rather than immediate, and that feelings are something you do rather than something you have.
From there it feels its way forward, trying to contour how such propositions could inform relations between people in dance and beyond.
analysis was initiated by Adriano Wilfert Jensen in 2017 and so far Karima El Amrani (FR), Chloe Chignell (AUS), Stefan Govaart (NL), Sandra Lolax (FI), Alexandra Tveit (NO), Marie Ursin (NO), Anne Juren (FR), Simon Asencio (FR), Dina El Kaisy (DE), Ana Vujanovic (SRB) and Dean Blunt (UK) have been part of its development.
Dance with and by (cast depending on availabilities and occasion): Adriano Wilfert Jensen, Karima El Amrani, Stefan Govaart, Alexandra Tveit, Marie Ursin, Chloe Chignell, Sandra Lolax, Simon Asencio, Agela Goh
Setting: Simon Asencio, Adriano Wilfert Jensen
Composer: Dean Blunt
Photos: Alissa Šnaider
Producer: Eneli JärsCo-producers: Kanuti Gildi SAAL (Tallinn), Bora Bora (Aarhus), Dansehallerne (Copenhagen), Centre d’Art Contemporain (Geneva), MDT (Stockholm)
Supported by: Statens Kunstfond, Knud Højgaards Fond, Wilhelm Hansens Fond, Beckett Fonden'
Residency support: Nordic-Baltic Mobility ProgramThanks to: Performing Arts Forum (Sankt Erme), Buda (Kortrijk), Pianofabriek (Brussels), Impulstanz and Alice Chauchat, Annika Üprus, Madlen Hirtentreu, Storm Møller Madsen, Dina El Kaisy Friemuth, Jassem Hindi, Emma Daniel, Iggy Lond Malmborg, Maike Lond Malmborg, Hanna Erlman, Danjel Andersson, Michelangelo Miccolis, Eneli Järs, Efva Lilja, Priit Raud, Henry Kasch and all the feelings Premiere: 24.01.2019 Bora Bora, Aarhussession: 70’