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Dance for Hope
About
Director: Celeste Combes
Performers: Byuka, Kalina Petrova, Fiona Blair
Hope is the name of the whale suspended inside the Natural History Museum, calling us for a collective, embodied prayer. You are invited to take part in a dance intervention at the Natural History Museum. Join a flashmob in honour of Hope, the blue whale skeleton.
Everyday visitors of the museum walk under the skeleton, look up for a second, take a picture.
Our interaction with the bones is very limited.
We don’t give ourselves the freedom to connect with the dead whale in an embodied way, neither emotionally.
So let's challenge this attitude by offering a dance to the remains of a being who needs to be mourned and honoured.
In the past century, humans have brought the Blue whale to the brink of extinction.The wound between humans and whales is deep. To start healing what is living, we need to care for what is dead.
Whale bones have been worshipped in different traditions, notably amongst Vietnamese fishermen. But our culture negates the life and memories bones carry. This makes our mourning process difficult, and alienates us from the death we have generated.
Rather than a disruption of the space, our action will be an invitation for an alternative relationship to the skeleton.
The collective choreography will be very simple. It will include voice. We will meet outside of South Kensington station to learn it together. There will also be a workshop held on Thursday eve 13th of February to prepare our flash-moby dick.
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