Dalija Acin Thelander is a choreographer and a cultural worker based in Stockholm.
The focus of her current artistic research and creation are performances for babies.
Her work for the youngest audience concerns the exploration of the choreographic practices which focuses on heightened immediacy and immersion of the audience, aiming for a multi-modal and affective experience. She is interested in the exploration of the synergy of choreography and installation art and their capacities for activation of the audience. Her performances enable the youngest audience to experience performing arts from multi-perspective, addressing their kinaesthetic sense as well as ‘near’ and ‘distant’ senses. She perceives the spectators as a co-creators of event and therefore their experience and responses as a part of the aesthetic of the performance.
AVAILABLE WORKS 2019- 2020
The Garden Of Spirited Minds
The Garden Of Spirited Minds is durational installation based performance for babies 0-12 months which proposes to babies and their adults exceptional immersive and multi-sensorial artistic experience. It invites audience to freely move, enjoy multiple perspectives, explore, be active and/or relax, at the time which suits them the best, and as long as it suits them, within the 6 hours of running time. The installation environment is designed to challenge usual conceptions of aesthetics for babies. It affirms the idea of place as sensed, place as sensation – space as audile-tactile or kinaesthetic sensory universe.
Essential for the concept is the notion of audience’s agency in correlation with multi-directional interaction of the senses and sensuous interrelationship of body-mind-environment. Safe and stimulating performance environments is conceived to generate an interrelational ecology, providing unique conditions for a wide variety of interchange and communication.
Myriader av världar
Myriad av världar invites it’s audience to wander trough and be a part of ever-changing enchanted worlds, to join the rituals, celebrations, mysterious processions, together with those who are devoted to guard those worlds, build them, alter and celebrate. In togetherness we will dwell, drift off, wonder, loose and find each other over and over again.
Myriad av världar invites babies and their adults to sensorially saturated experience generated within immersive, installation based environment. Diverse artistic practices are fused into the spirited interplay, generating a unique and intriguing substance of the performance. It’s landscape, rich in stimuli, triggers the curiosity of the youngest ones and encourages interaction and exploration.
Performance asserts immediacy of personal experience, by proposing interplay of audiences’ physical movement and sensory input, making it artistically valuable for both babies and adults. It empasizes the importance of individual who experiences the art not in transcendent or existential isolation but as part of collective or community.
Sensescapes
a dance performance for babies 3-18 months
Sensescapes is an installation based performance which proposes a choreographed, interactive and multi-sensory experience to babies and their care-takers. It is conceived as an environment designed to challenge usual conceptions of aesthetics for babies. Constituted of a number of interconnected diverse segments, with music projected three-dimensionally, it spreads in the space without the usual audience-stage division. Dance is proposing a distinctive perspective of the bodies in motion and interrelation, while presence of the dancers affirms the shared experience and interaction. The stage set and objects are made with the aim to incite sensation of space, touch and movement, and while being interlaced with other elements, contribute to the navigation of the perception and interplay.
Baby Space
an installation and dance performance for babies 0-12 months
Baby Space is created as enjoyable and safe environment which offers to infants and adults an extraordinary experience. The installation space is made of white, soft and resilient material that is pleasant and smooth to touch and its visually isolated from its surrounding. Its contents, stimulate all the senses by combining visual arts, dance, music and poetry. All the elements are carefully brought together to introduce the setting for exceptional artistic and social experience – stimulating the perception of the youngest ones, encouraging interaction, sparking their curiosity and triggering exploration.
Baby Space is conceived as an installation – accessible for visitors for several hours a day and as a dance performance inside the installation – scheduled at the certain hours.
There are three version of Baby Space projects produced so far – by Arts Station Foundation in Poznan (Poland), by Aabendans in Roskilde (Denmark), by Gallery 12 HUB in Belgrade, (Serbia). The next one will be produced in Tokyo, Japan, in July 2016. All the Baby Spaces are produced in collaboration with local artists and tailored to fit the production venues.