Series of durational choreographed installation-based performances for a youngest neurodiverse and integrated audience
Choreography and overall design: Dalija Acin Thelander
In collaboration with and performed by: Noah Hellwig, Andrea Svensson, Josefine Larson Olin, Jimmie Larsson, Dalija Acin Thelander
Music: Thomas Jeker
Supported by: ccap / Hallen i Farsta (Stockholm Sweden), Bora Bora – Dance and Visual Theater (Århus, Denmark), LaSala (Sabadell, Spain), Kulturhuset Dieselverkstaden (Stockholm, Sweden)
Funded by Swedish Arts Council, City of Stockholm, Stockholm Region and the Swedish Arts Grants Committee
*
It’s a gathering.
It’s a celebration of being-in-the-world.
It’s a where the ‘time rests in itself, where it ‘deepens vertically’.
it’s a space for dwelling, directionless floating, contemplative lingering...
It’s where we find the ‘pleasure in welcoming the unknown’
In dAzzleMAZE, we surrender to reflection, glow and beauty.
dAzzleMAZE is installation-based, durational performance created primarily for the youngest audiences who relate to the world differently: neurodiverse children aged between 6 months to 3, as well as for neurotypical children up to 16 months old. In order to profoundly respond to the needs of its audience, the project is research based - structured as a sequenced, process-based framework and will be carried out through exploration with various audience groups, aiming to result in series of variable, but aesthetically related installations/performances that welcome integrated audience. Hence the project will yield a high extent of adaptability, rather than producing one fixed, the final form of the work.
The audience is invited to enjoy the performance freely and on their own terms. It provides various extents of experience for all types of perception with no judgment on eligible and ineligible behaviors (such as falling asleep, drifting away, isolating as well as social exchange, exhilaration, vocalizing etc).
The audience can choose to wear the costumes which are placed in the welcoming area, and which are aesthetically corresponding to costumes that performers wear. In this way, the sensation of togetherness is enhanced.
Within the several hours of performance duration (varies between 2 and 4h), the audience can come when they are ready, exit and re-enter during the show, and leave when it suits them the most.
*
The performance environment aims to challenge the conventional conception of aesthetics for this audience and will propose out-of the ordinary, communal experience and ambiance valuable for both adults and children. The multifaceted practice applied in this project focuses on the extents of interplay between the audience’s agency in correlation with the multi-directional interaction of the senses and sensuous interrelationship of body-mind-environment. Placing at its center the sentient body and intersubjectivity,
with the emphasis on the present moment, this project celebrates the difference and diversity. It proposes an open-ended experience that does not set fixed goals but rather invites the audience to discover new forms of being-with-the-world. The audience is integral to the experiential heart of the work and central to its form and aesthetic.
This project is related to my long-term research which concerns the investigation of the notion of agency in choreographic practices for babies and youngest children, approached from the sensorial-perceptual perspective. It employs choreography as the organization of attention and asserts decentralized spectatorship, emphasizing the importance of individual consciousness, freedom, and choice. It aims to contribute to the production and distribution of innovative knowledge in performing arts practices for the neurodiverse audiences and to further the developments within the field of Theatre for Young Audience. It attempts to diversify current thinking and to advocate the importance of emancipatory spectatorship for this marginalized audience, affirming the theatre experience as a place of possibility rather than a limitation.
