Wallflower

Can you remember every dance you’ve ever danced? 

Wallflower is a dance marathon, a game that alters according to the players. A group of performers on stage trying to remember every dance they’ve ever danced. 

Memories of dancing alone all night at a party; of whirling across the stage at the Paris Opera Ballet; of silently, slowly revolving with a new lover on a canal boat at night; of a repeated tic – a bodily habit that feels like dancing; of walking alongside their mother; of racing with a dog across a beach; of dizzily spinning children; of weeping and dancing; of hitting the mark for Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker…. 

Like much of Quarantine’s work, Wallflower serves as a form of live portraiture. Each night, the performers choose what they want to reveal, what story of themselves they want to tell. In the seats around the dance floor, the spectators bring their own histories, understanding and expectations. And somewhere between the spotlight and the sidelines, Wallflower happens.

Wallflower takes three forms, a 90-minute version and a durational version which transforms the performance into an epic, exhausting 5-hour piece – the dancers grappling with the effort of memory as bodies and minds tire, hurt, slow and repeat. In March 2019 we also presented the first ever 12-hour performance of Wallflower at Universal Hall, Findhorn, Scotland. In all versions, another performer sits in the audience and documents each dance in an ever-expanding archive, a vast record of thousands of remembered dances, which begins with dances from early rehearsals and always ends with the last dance. To date, it would take over two days to dance them all.

Alongside our 2018/19 tour of Wallflower, we invited local people from Brighton, Cleckheaton, Gateshead, Lancaster, Findhorn, Halifax, and Salford to share their own remembered dances. You can see these at www.wallflowerdances.com.