Invisible Dances has become a global phenomenon with performances across six continents and this April it will make its English premiere. Part of PDSW’s Dancing in the Street that brings dance to your doorstep, Elisabeth Schilling’s Invisible Dances is organised and performed in collaboration with local artists. This innovative participatory piece overcomes the challenges of lockdown to connect artists and audiences – just not in the conventional sense.
PDSW is committed to ensure that, even in lockdown, their community can keep dancing and engage with performance and Invisible Dances brings dance directly back to city centres. This inspiring work combines dance and visual art in a poetic and playful way, turning our streets and squares into stages. The performance is unannounced but takes place at night on the streets while residents sleeps, ready to surprise them the next morning with its colourful traces.
A group of socially-distanced local dancers will meet in the middle of the night, in the BCP area, accompanied by the same number of “tracers”. The dancers start dancing through the town while, behind them, the tracers mark each pathway with chalk spray. Come morning, when everyone wakes up, they will be greeted with colourful lines dancing through the town, intertwining, looping, oscillating – a trace of an “invisible dance”. These traces are a public memory of a dance no-one saw, and an invitation for everyone to join the dance in the street.
Artistic Director and CEO of Pavilion Dance South West, Zannah Chisholm comments, While our building is closed due to COVID restrictions we have been exploring new and creative ways to bring dance to people in our local community. Invisible Dances is part of our #DancingInThe Streets campaign that will be rolling out over the summer. It is for all ages, experience and most of all is a fun and safe way to join in and enjoy dance. It also will place BCP on the international creative map, as our town joins other cities across the globe who have been visited by the Invisible Dances performers!
Invisible Dances was seed funded by the PDSW’s Surf the Wave project.
Invisible Dances runs Tuesday 6th – Sunday 10th April 2021. More information can be found here
