In the latest work by the choreographer and dancer Omar Rajeh, the boundary between audience and performer dissolves. Staged outdoors in the picturesque setting of Piazza Bernardino Luini, overlooking Lake Lugano, the performance challenges power structures and involves the audience in a shared choreographic experience, where participation becomes an opportunity to rethink presence, hierarchy and encounter.
Dance People is a title that speaks for itself: it places community values at the heart of artistic creation, affirming their presence through the sharing of space with citizens and opening up new ways of being together.
In a world driven by intelligent algorithms and artificial intelligence, some of the most pressing questions concern encounters, gatherings and forms of coexistence.
What is the space for democracy, culture and identity? How does one create a space, how does one protect it, how does one inhabit it together?
With a diverse and highly sensitive artistic group, Omar Rajeh and Mia Habis invite the audience to take part in a collective creative moment. The work is joyful and festive, yet remains at the same time lucidly critical of power and the dynamics of supremacy.
Dance People is not a performance to be observed from a distance: it is a gesture to be shared, a space to be inhabited.
