Timeloops
Community based workshops and performance for public spaces (ca. 1 hour, 15 min.)
Commissioned and produced by Skånes Dansteatern (SE)
Premiere April, 2022 and a tour throughout 2022
Time Loops is a dance project and choreography that investigates community, place, and time in relation to people, landmarks, and routines with children, youth, and adults across Sweden. Structured as workshops leading to a final performance, choreographer Rachel Tess, sound designer Uli Ruchlinski, four dancers from Skånesdansteater, and workshop participants endeavor to stop time through a chorus of dance, sound, and song. Time Loops creates a moment where time stands still in a place of significance for the participants. This could be the entrance to the local library, a mound of dirt built up in the common area between apartment buildings, or the parking lot at the local grocery store. It unfolds through a soundscape created during the workshops, live singing and movements like ‘the longest walk to your apartment you have ever done in one leap’, ‘the first dance you were ever taught’, ‘the only dance you like to dance’, ‘the feeling of being here’, ‘the feeling of being there’, and an exalted parade as the sound and movement crescendo taking passers-by by surprise.
Time Loops premiered on Dansens dag 29 April 2022 at Drottninghög in Helsingborg. Before that, the first seeds for the performance were sown together with 60 fourth and fifth graders from Drottninghögskolan in Helsingborg. The Time Loops parade then made its way through Skåne – via Klostergården in Lund, Knislinge and Höör to finally end in Simrishamn in July.
During four months, four dancers from Skåne's Dance Theater met a total of 140 participants aged 7–67 at five different locations throughout Scania. Based on a method and an artistic basic concept created by Tess and Ruchlinski, the participants together with the dancers met on eight occasions and developed a performance which was then shown with free admission in the public space in the respective location.
In total, six unique performances were created that were visited by over 700 people in the audience.
