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Speculative School of Sleep Dance
SLEEP DANCE PERFORMANCE / Maindeck / 20-40 min

A dancer acts in reduced, repetitive movements in the public space and imagines a sleep mode during these movements. A choreographed sequence of “tired movements” is followed by a walking, encircling of space and lying down to sleep. But even this sleep is simulated - after more or less a short time the actor starts anew.

The project “Speculative School of Sleep Dance” shows ways of looking at fatigue, relaxation, sleepwalking safety or exhaustion. During this reduced economy of movement and the simulated sleep in public, the performer also offers herself as unprotected and throws the viewer back on herself with all these impressions. Sleep is egalitarian in all its aspects, the criticism of economicized society goes without saying.

In addition to this perspective, the Speculative School of Sleep Dance is also asking another question - that of physiological-cognitive processing of movement in the sleeping state. The performers' experience that movement can be learned better with an imaginary fatigue factor meets scientific studies that confirm the processing of movement during sleep.

All in all, the Speculative School of Sleep Dance is a multidirectional, widely divergent speculative questioning of cognitive-physiological processing in imagined and real sleep mode, a commitment to reduced economy of movement and to inner autopilot, and a call to refresh oneself in de-optimization - “in washed, ionized, ozoned and ultra-solarized sleep movement”.

Gerlinde Roidinger: Live Performance and Movement
Tanja Brandmayr: Concept