“Rudy” at Köttinspektionen

During the summer residence 2016, the work “Rudy” visit Köttinspektionen, a performance that recognizes and give importance to individual and common desires to dance and move. This time with and by Minna Berglund, Chloë Chignell, Anna-Karin Domfors, Anna Bontha, Elise Sjoberg, Ellen Söderhult, Gry Ting Forest, Lisa shaman, Lisen Ellard and Vanessa Virta. “Rudy” was co-produced by Weld in Stockholm, where it had its premiere in the spring 2016.

——

What if we shift the question from ‘who do I want to be?’ to the question, ‘what kind of life do I want to live with others?’ / Judith Butler

Understanding dance as a continuous negotiation between historical, collective and personal habits, norms, and desires, her question felt like an important, impracticable but inspiring starting point for a dance by many. It became clear that to support, submit to, and care for a proposal and to fill the verb ”following” with agency was important. In a wish to unveil what norms and ideologies reside within dance performance, it started with questioning not the form dance takes, but for what reasons and what dance’s purposes potentially could be. This, out of the ambition to not take any purpose for granted.

In this performance individual dance histories, dreams, desires and memories reappear, to collide with other ones and be compiled to a new oneness. Taken out of contexts the separate dances constitute a new whole that make altered meanings appear, open for other readings and different understandings. Out of a view on creativity as collective and art as more than the production of artefacts RUDY proposes a calm moment in which empathy, care, following, supporting, repeating and imitating are considered vital aspects of art.