Research and work-in-progress / 2019-2021

Hands In is a collaboration between Dasha Sedova (Russia), Joni Barnard (South Africa) and Liselotte Singer (Germany/France). It is a research and a dance performance that deals with the politics of touch in different cultural dance contexts and the transformative possibilities of touch on a symbolic and social level. Hands In has began as a lab in St Petersburg at the SDVIG in August 2019, and contunued in South Africa in January 2020. Coming from three different cultural contexts and dance backgrounds, our objective is to enter a radical process of embodiment that is influenced by our different social contexts and create dialogues between these contexts and our different dance lineages. How can different cultural understanding of touch liberate? How is touch received and perceived in our three different dance communities, and furthermore, in the three different societies where we come from and/or evolved in? With these questions as the main frame, we engage with the notion of the body as a cultural and political landscape, that is shaped by circumstances and experiences and that is made of multiple layers. We want to focus on how we can activate, communicate and emancipate this landscape through touch and use this dialogue as a source for movement creation, choreography and performance.

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More on the project and its development: https://singerliselotte.wixsite.com/handsin