DANCE WITH ME is a two-channel moving image work exploring identity, memory and belonging through the shared language of dance.
Drawing on personal and collective experiences of British East and Southeast Asian communities, the work has been shaped by conversations, shared memories and ideas emerging from community workshops. Reflecting on dance halls and clubs as social spaces where generations have sought freedom, self-expression and belonging, it brings together motion capture, digital storytelling and music to create a dreamlike world of nostalgia, cultural time-loops and imagined encounters, where the experiences of one generation find their reflection in another.
Developed through a research and development residency as part of FVU:LAB, alongside support from the Centre for Performance, Technology, and Equity (PTEQ) at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, the work explores how motion capture technology can translate human movement, gesture and interaction into animated forms.
Moving between everyday routines, memories and imagined encounters, dance becomes a means of navigating the familiar and unfamiliar, of discovering something within ourselves through the world around us. Rather than defining belonging, the work considers how it might be felt, remembered and experienced through movement and human connection.
The moving image installation forms the centrepiece of a wider exhibition at Paradise Works, Salford, bringing together moving image, printmaking and interactive elements that invite audiences to reflect on memory, connection and belonging.
Under the same eclipse, dance with me so we don’t fall.
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DANCE WITH ME has been co-commissioned by Paradise Works, Salford and Film and Video Umbrella.
Supported by Arts Council England.
Supported by FVU:LAB a research and development residency for artists supporting access to new technology in moving image.
The exhibition is supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.
FVU:LAB is a Film and Video Umbrella initiative delivered in collaboration with Nottingham Trent University.
FVU:LAB is supported by The Fenton Arts Trust.
