Communal Rope Workshop

The time has come to share our practice with others. We, Anna & Leandro from QUARTO warmly welcome you into our room, our practice, our rope. The proposal is a 4-day long workshop at MDT, Stockholm that will introduce you to our physical practice developed during the past ten years through the relationality and materiality of a kilometer long rope and the body. We are working on a durational site-specific piece Communal Rope that will premiere at the beginning of September in collaboration with MDT, Weld, Dansens Hus and SKH.

It all started a decade ago as an exhilarating yet laborious encounter between the one-thousand meter-long stretch of thick black rope and the two of us. Following many editions of this initial encounter, time has come to share the rope. Instead of letting it coil and knot in between the two of us we are relaxing the grip over it in order to extend, stretch and make it travel among others and across the cityscape. During several hours a temporary community of participants will walk the rope through the streets of Stockholm, in between Weld – Dansens Hus – MDT. While working our way along the rope, we will once again question an old unfulfilled promise: that the shared work has the power to make us dream about the city as a topography of an active compassionate co-existence that we can claim as our shared home. And, even if no city of today can live up to this promise, even if such a shared home is not yet built, this will not prevent us from desiring it into existence. Maybe, just maybe, the kilometer-long rope can help us dream.

The knot is getting undone yet entanglement is maintained, beyond the density of the material and toward the voids that are opening in between. When the connections between the multiple separate points becomes the real purpose of stretching the rope, then the distance that was separating us is suddenly revealed as a web of intimate yet immaterial relations that are bringing us together, that are re-creating the time-space that we are sharing, social time-space which hold us and host us, in whose in-betweenness we are dwelling.

Please send us a short CV and short description about why you would like to be part of this workshop and piece to production@quartoperformance.com. Deadline for expressions of interest is midnight on 30/05/2021.

This call out is open to professional dancers and performers. This workshop is free of charge, and is not paid. We ask you to commit to the full period: 3-6/6 2021, 10:00-16:00 daily.

This workshop is carefully planned to be safe and in line with Covid-19 recommendations and restrictions. The number of participants will be regulated according to Folkhälsomyndighetens standards for arrangements.