DANCE IS ANCIENT

DANCE IS ANCIENT is a durational performance that is a club night and a club night that is a performance, in which the dancer and choreographer Frédéric Gies collaborates with the dj Fiedel, the visual artist Anton Stoianov and the lighting designer Thomas Zamolo. To the infectious techno beats of Fiedel, Frédéric Gies inhabits the dance floor and all adjacent spaces as a faunlike, panic figure. Dancing non-stop during the whole performance, they act as a catalyst for the audience’s participation. Eliciting and unleashing the fathomless and primal forces that traverse the depths of dancing bodies, Frédéric Gies also serves a whole history of dance, summoning up ghosts of dancers, from Nijinsky  to Isadora Duncan and Dominique Bagouet. Their dance collapses the difference between ballet, club dance and folk dance. The performance addresses altogether the bodily, perceptual, sensual, emotional, social and spiritual dimensions of the act of dancing, DANCE IS ANCIENT brings the magic of the dance floor to its highest levels.

Creation: 2016
Premiere: Nov. 19, 2016 * Göteborg, Sweden

Dance: Frédéric Gies 
DJ: Fiedel 
Sculpture: Anton Stoianov 
Lights: Thomas Zamolo

Funded by the Swedish Arts Council, coproduced by Weld and Skogen, with the support of Röda Sten
Premiered on November 19, 2016 at Röda Sten in Göteborg on November 19, 2016. Presented also at Weld (Stockholm), Serralves – Museum of Contemporary Art (Porto), Zürich Moves festival (Zürich), Norbergfestival (Norberg), CTM Festival (Berlin), Art Stations Foundation (Poznan), Ephemera festival (Warsaw), Waking Life Festival (Portugal), Journey to the East festival (Glasgow), MARC (Knislinge), Hallen (Farsta), Inkonst (Malmö)