RITE | RAVE

“The art stunt Rite/Rave was my response to the invitation from Morton Jay (DJ Baby Stinky) to do something at the DADA club night at Cementen. I was inspired by DJ Baby Stinky playing Rite of Spring by Igor Stravinksi as a transition between two sets at a previous club night at Cementen. It surprised me that everyone at the club continued to dance just as fiercely to the classical music as to techno and house. I think of club dance as our modern Rite, or folk dance.

The start, to the quiet part of the music, where five dancers (plus a couple of random clubbers who randomly joined in the stunner;) lay on the floor and scanned different body parts with the light from smartphones, is taken from the student performance “This is the stuff that Dreams are made of” (2020). It is a way of including our use of social media as an organic extension of our bodies, while at the same time illuminating our physical bodies. Very concrete. Almost like charging the physical body with energy.

The jumps to the more rhythmic part of the music were a way to get out all the energy that builds up in the body with everything that is going on in the world of war, genocide and election results that tick into our lives through smartphones. A kind of healthy reaction to a completely hackneyed world I thought. The idea was that DJ Baby Stinki mixed over from Stravinsky back to Techno again so that the energy from the art moan could continue on the dance floor into the night. I think the dancing at the club became a bit more hardcore after the moan, but I may be subjective here.. (maybe you can ask someone else who was there?;)

PS: maybe you can use this whole message exchange between us? Best. Brynjar”

Concept by: Brynjar Åbel Bandlien

Dancers: Brynjar Åbel Bandlien, Nathalie Wiberg, Rosa Eri Steen, Viljar Irtun Moe, Inez Wall Castell.

Presented at Cementen in Stavanger, Norway autumn 2024.