Molded Dances is a sophisticated but naive dance performance, mixing the nerdy study of Laban’s dance notation system and the strive for a free life. With inspiration taken from the alternative community that took place at Monte Verità in Switzerland in the early 1900’s, Clara Sjölin is together with her collaborators investigating the wish to withdraw oneself from society to instead explore a lifestyle liberated from imposed rules.

The choreographic framework and the spatial structures reinforce the performers’ movements as much as they restrict and mold. Their dancing obeys the order, still they also manifest a myriad of emancipations where the distinction between what is enslaving and what is freeing blurs. They dance in unity and on their own, well planned and in aimless improvisations, they follow the given task and their own instinct. Whilst the performers liberate themselves from one set of rules, they are confronted with the establishment of another set of them.

Concept and Direction: Clara Sjölin 
Creation and Performance: Sean Murray, Camilla Isola, Clara Sjölin
Costume and Scenic Design: Andrea Garcia Vasquez 
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Premiered in September 2021 at LOFFT - DAS THEATER, Leipzig

Funded by the Cultural Foundation of the Free State of Saxony. This project is co-financed by tax revenue based on the budget approved by the Saxon State Parliament.

Med stöd av Dans i Västerbotten.

​Research and development was supported through #TakeCareResidenzen. Funded by the Performing Arts Fund with funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.

Photo © Bernadette Keating