Books on the Dancefloor

Dance & performance
Free entry

3 hr

Info

Books on the Dancefloor is a performative action and participatory installation consisting of individual and collective exercises/games created around processes of cognitive and sensory deterritorialisation of the physical library. It works as a performative environment that offers a participatory experience and frame that is non-intrusive. The audience can spend as much time as they want inside the work, being able to leave and come back whenever they choose. They can transform the space by following individual instructions that are placed within the setup, they can take part in collective exercises or they can just be present in the space, simply reading or watching the dynamic generated by actions, gestures, the books and the moving bodies.

The Oracle of Performative Research

During IRIDESCENT – International festival of contemporary dance and other sensible reconfigurations, Books on the Dancefloor is presenting a new performative exercise in its operating format.

An oracle card system is a structure similar to tarot or divination cards, a word derived from the Latin “divinare” which translates as “to predict, be inspired by the unknown”, a practice of discovering knowledge about the future or of understanding current relationships and circumstances. The connection between cards and libraries is implicit. All libraries use book cards to index, organize and locate their materials. These cards contain elements such as the author, title, and subject and they combine this information into specific systems that are site-specific.

The exercise involves one-to-one performative readings based on a new concept and a set of oracle books based on issues of Performance Research. The deck of oracle cards has as a conceptual reference and focuses on several topics addressed in the publication – such as medicine, empathy, generosity, singularity, time, consumption, technology, etc. A participant is given a set of instructions to formulate a question. Then they receive a performative answer. The purpose of these questions and answers is to establish a link between researching performance and performing the research. A new performative score is generated and improvised from a series of preset elements that are based on specialised perspectives which mediate a dynamic exchange between academic research, theory, critical thinking and their application through bodily practices.

In order for the CNDB Media Library to become a space for potential transitions and unexpected encounters, we invite you to participate in a series of readings, actions and performative scores, ingenious methods of reconfiguring books and the ideas they contain and the multiple of experiences generated by all these intersections. You can find out more about the CNDB Media Library here.

*At the end of the performance, participants can sign up to borrow the books they felt connected to, including the 83 issues of Performance Research, available at CNDB.

By/with: Corina Cimpoieru, Renate Dinu, Paula Dunker
Co-author: Ilinca Micu
Graphic design: Cristiana Costin

Biographies
Corina Cimpoieru has a background in cultural anthropology and is currently working as a researcher and coordinator of the Media Library and Archive at the National Center for Dance Bucharest. In the last years, she has dedicated her time to identifying dance documents, researching in both private and institutional archives, in order to recover the history of Romanian dance and performance through archival practices that reconfigure their potential for contemporary projects: performing arts reenactments, dance and performance exhibitions, editorial projects.

Renate Dinu is a freelance performer in a continuous process of formation and transformation. After graduating in Economics, she did an Art and Visual Culture Studies MA. She has specialized in participatory practices and how they influence and are influenced by social realities, with a focus on their performative dimension. She took part in practice-led contemporary dance research laboratories, exploring posthumanist performativity, real-time composition and techno culture, as part of her training at the National Center for Dance Bucharest (CNDB), where she is also an artistic consultant since 2018. From 2016, she has performed in conventional and unconventional spaces, galleries and festivals. She’s currently living in Bucharest.

Paula Dunker promises that her (artistic) work is based on the analysis of the systems of representation, production and creation. She mostly works with the body. Romanian contemporary dance’s daughter, sister of the local political theater, mother in the Bucharest queer clubbing scene, she is (together with Alex Bălă) the initiator of the techno-faggothique music genre. Confronting existing patterns, she helps build up possible new worlds and heal this one.

Performance presented as part of the Sonic Bodies project.

Co-financed by
Administration of the National Cultural Fund
The project does not necessarily represent the position of The Administration of the National Cultural Fund. The Administration of the National Cultural Fund is not responsible for the content of the project or the manner in which the results of the project may be used. These are entirely the responsibility of the funding recipient.