To Cajole

by Alessia Luna Wyss & Camilla Przystawski

Length: 15 minutes

To Cajole is a dance piece, a duet, a dialogue between two women, developed in a state of injury for one of them. Carried away together by the Italian pop song of the 60s and 70s, they want to challenge the conventional display of interaction between two or more women that we are still exposed to in many films, books, music etc. The performers are making use of the influences of martial art techniques they have in common (Play-Fight and Systema) and combine them with their approach to contemporary dance and partner work to unveil a wide variety of character traits and physicality. Playful, sincere and powerful. The movements and the order of events are improvised and will be arranged differently with each performance. To Cajole wants to invite the audience to a co-created space where we can accept to be vulnerable; a space where to support someone without being hurt; a shared time expecting nothing.

The topics we have been researching around are self-defense, origin of violence, human connection, collaboration and confrontation. The piece is inspired by the book ‘Self-defense – a philosophy of violence’ by Elsa Dorlin. With this piece we want to dig deep inside the art of improvisation on stage, departing from the question How to keep being surprised on stage and let real emotions happen without leaving a natural, yet performative state. We also want to find an expression for our political thoughts and to contribute to bringing further feminist and queer topics and addressing them publicly to an audience.