While we are here is a work for five performers around rave and folk dance. The performance focusses on how these disparate dance forms both tap into an essential human desire with shared characteristics of loss of control and collective intimacy.

 

While we are here starts from the premise that rave is nothing new: the human need to dance hard together is timeless. The spaces can be clubs, town halls, public squares, fields or forests, and the dances can take many forms, but the underlying phenomenon is the same: people come together and organise a temporary, disruptive space where interrelationships are radically different from everyday life. 

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Although it is timeless,  this intensive dancing together is less and less part of an increasingly controlled and individualistic society. While we are here places (hardcore) techno rave in this age-old history of increasingly marginalized collective dance rituals. 

By connecting rave and folk, we wish to speculate our own technofolk-dance.

The folk we propose is not singular but a borderless, hybrid technofolk, a dirty folk that celebrates difference.
The folk we propose is a soft folk, one that chooses to dance intimately together.

The folk we propose is a lost folk.

With no nostalgia for the past and no specific future in mind.

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Concept and choreography: Lisa Vereertbrugghen

Performance and co-creation: Claire Godsmark, Dolores Hulan, Eimi Leggett, Castélie Yalombo Lilonge

Dramaturgy: Simon Baetens and Sophie Guisset
Artistic advice: Madison Bycroft

Sound: Michael Langeder
Song: Michaela Riener and Lisa Vereertbrugghen
Costume design: Cee Füllemann

Lights: Vera Martins
Folk expert: Aurélie Giet & Koen D'hondt 
Special thanks to Nathaniel Moore 

 

Production: CAMPO
Partners: Dans in Brugge (Concertgebouw, Cultuurcentrum en Kaap), Kunstenwerkplaats KWP, STUK Arts

Centre, ICI — CCN Montpellier, Kunstencentrum BUDA, BIT teatergarasjen

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