This performance research departs from the post-French Revolution gatherings known as “Balls of Victims” (real or imagined), in which descendants of guillotined parents recreated their trauma through social dances. Reflecting on this historical example, I explore similar historical and contemporary precedents in mourning, initiation ceremonies, and protest culture. My performance navigates the junction of collective imagination and memory, blending physical reenactments with imagined archives across various mediums (text, sound, moving image) within the genre of choreographic mockumentary.
bio
Polina Fenko, born in 1997 in Saint-Petersburg, is an emerging dance artist and dramaturg with a base spanning Amsterdam and Berlin. She holds an MA in Contemporary Theatre, Dance, and Dramaturgy from Utrecht University and a dual BA in Art History from the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences (Saint-Petersburg State University and Bard College, New York).
In her performances and installations, she works with diverse forms of documents (like breathing scores, bodily imprints, dreams) that create liminal spaces of plural bodily realities through methods like infusion, overlay, juxtaposition, and disamalgamation. Themes include catastrophic thinking, fractal memory as bodily memory, and relational bodies shaped by personal and collective memories.
As a dance artist, Polina explores the format of social choreography that deals with exploration of alternative forms of coexistence and ways of relating to each other, while reimagining the notion of the social. In Amsterdam, she founded an Instant Composition Collective uniting performers, musicians, and interdisciplinary artists in experimenting with instant composition as both method and artistic practice within collective improvisation.
Driven by an interest in alternative forms of knowledge production she organises multidisciplinary laboratories that create spaces for experiential education and discussions in other than verbal types of communication. To mention just a few: Microurbanism and Microchoreography, Vulnerability and risk taking in instant Composition, On Minor Gesture and Microperception.
