dances for nobody’s gaze except for a fleeing fox
It could one day be a radio play.
Concept, continuous dances, sound collection, text: Zrinka Užbinec
Sound (conceptual collaboration, textures, music, edit): Aran Kleebaur
Occasional dances, text reformulations: Ana Kreitmeyer, Kasia Kania
For all those out there, dancing between me and my shadow.
To welcome the ghostly through absence, rather than inviting ghosts to unveil their presence.
Supported by the Ministry of Culture and Media, Croatia
Dances for nobody’s gaze except for a fleeing fox started as an accident and a necessity.
Now, they are a durational and occasional choreographic act. They began as a walk that needed more than a step, changing into an event on the soccer field, happening on every date spurred by the desire to move. No person saw them. Or they did not show themselves. The first dance occurred on the 22nd of May 2022. They were danced more than 60 times by now, partnered with many songs and silences.
Kitsune comes and leaves, ghosts exist as material to dance for and with, shadows are the only reference point. (I do sometimes hug a tree).
Yet, this dance carries a paradoxical sensation: to be seen but not observed. Moving through the field, I am invisible in plain sight. There is no audience, no direct gaze, only the quiet certainty of being witnessed by something beyond sight. A feeling of coexisting in parallel, lightly brushing against other realities without fully crossing into them.
Mostly (not) accompanied by sounds
(can it ever be a soundtrack?),
the dance is entwined with them, responding instinctively to the shifting concert of the field.
A recording studio of darkness. A radio play.
What follows is not a walk but a silent, rhythmic rebellion, a secret grave among the leaves.
Memories.
I flush and blush, but in the darkness, that is not so important.
The interplay of shadow and light creates a new dimension, as if it exists not only in the body but in the very gaps between the visible and the unnoticed. I do feel truly seen, not by someone, but by everything. We coexist, barely brushing against one another.
And in that secrecy, the true pleasure of the dance emerges, free, unnoticed, untouchable, a soft decay of rotten leaves, a frequency where everything speaks at once. A freedom disguised in plain sight.