Above: Short Sound Excerpt

"Dance Party (the apocalypse is disappointing)" is part of an ongoing series exploring symbolic violence, and the body as a site of resistance in crisis. In this sense violence is investigated on the one hand as an invisible social imaginary, ideological mechanism, and political condition. On the other hand it is questioned as a method of resistance and symbolic action. The work is a further development of Grace Euna Kim's Acid Bodies choreopolitical research, which explores hybrid forms of immersive performance and radical pedagogy. The performers were all participants of the "Acid Bodies" workshop action series at ZK/U - Center for Art and Urbanistics.

The blind morphing, falling, and crashing choreography was developed through embodied investigations whereby each participant deconstructed their body as a social and political paradigm, and questioned what they wish to rewrite and activate through its microcosm. ⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣In a sense the work attempts to reconcile the fear and precarity that often derails any possibility of real radical change. Can (imaginary) violence be embraced not as that which threatens or destroys, but that which emancipates and reclaims our collective future? If what we perceive as being normal and comfortable is actually masking an ideological violence, can what w perceive as being violent, actually be a radical form of recognition, care, and community? How might this "violence" enable new forms of language, togetherness, and love?⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣ How might the ‘fall’ empower, rather than weaken?

⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣Concept, Artistic Direction, and Choreography: Grace Euna Kim
Performers (main): Georg Buchheister, Anne-Sophie Debrabant, Vicky Kouvaraki, Pat Maslowska, Luisa Spina
Performers (supporting): Alessia Arbustini, Burcu Ateş, Camille Mojon, Chiara Bontacchio, Daphne Rüde, Karina Shabanova, Kuzanna Zolupajlo, Marco Poio, Marianne Marianne, Nicolas SanMartin, Léna Sophia Bagutti, Tania Turcan, Tim Isherwood, Ömer Çetinkaya
Photos: Marjorie Brunet Plaza, Alvaro Rodriguez, Nobutaka Shomura
Production Assistant: Ula Liagaite
Cooperation: Developed and presented under the framework of Lake Studio's Double Bill Residency, funded by the Berliner Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa.
Special Thanks: Marcela Giesche

Patrycja Maslowska
“The adventure that I open the door to, was the most unconventional from all of my lifetime experiences, yet its primal aim was to expose the rawest of the essence, hidden deeply under the thick layers of conventional, coded gestures, that, what I later learnt with the full intuitive understanding, reflect a coded, imprisoned state of mind.
           What was the most special about the Acid Bodies was that it was breaking the patterns. It started by building trust, empathy and intimacy – the most significant pillars of each relationship. I felt it throughout the whole communication with Euna, from the very first email I received from her I felt like she’s genuinely interested in what I have to say, who am I and what brings me here - that she wanted to discovery by inviting me to share my most crucial (co)existential questions I’ve been developing and bearing since the beginning of my conscious life. Here I am – writing about the panopticon that symbolises how I feel regarding the system. Those questions from Euna made me remind myself things that were asleep, alive but a little numbed, now again waken and hungry. I didn’t know what to expect, so I had no chance to overgrow with the expectations, to put one of the social masks. What happened next – I would never be able to guess before I actually had an indescribable luck to experience.
          On the long list of lessons that I gained throughout working with and learning from Euna, the one about taking action is the one that has the biggest potential to bring us the future back. And what I hope for the worldwide spread societies, is that they started this new decade with the strong and sustainable realisation that out future requires depetrification and there is no one but each of us that can make that happen.”


Anne-Sophie Debrabant
“Intense, poetic, apocalyptic. I am in gratitude to have been able to participate in a project of such emotional, physical and psychological strength. It made me realize that questioning habits were essential to finding one’s place. I became aware of the sovereign strength of the body, that it was capable of regaining its freedom in the face of alienation. Listening to the richness of this silent and profound language that governs us and makes us live. This openness made me change the way I communicate with my body and with others. To become fully aware of what I experience every day in my body of domination and oppression but also of the passion that animates me.”