Nora-Swantje Almes

Re-Framing Dance Producer Residency Artist

Dance and performance art have been increasingly commodified by art institutions functioning as a value-booster for the attention economy.

How can galleries and arts organisations accommodate bodies? How can we ensure dance/performance art is not a supplement in visual art contexts? And what can we learn from queer club culture to create safe spaces of experimentation?

With choreographer Aaron Ratajczyk and collaborating local movement artists and Primary’s staff team, Nora-Swantje Almes built on previous research, exploring queer practices from an intersectional perspective – to let go of what we know and radically accommodate, connect, and support.

Movement practices and what we might consider “queer” sit in opposition to the operations of conventional art institutions: unpredictable, influx and improvised. Nora-Swantje considers these modes productive in the sense of Sara Ahmed’s “deviation as pleasure”. Disorientation makes us find new paths and reconsider what was established as the norm. The in-between, the dissonances and physical proximity of different realities is what interests Almes.

The research included a series of interviews that resulted in a podcast series with choreographers, dancers, and queer party collectives to imagine a different set of requirements needed for producers, curators and institutions – outlining the care, infrastructure and curatorial support needed for these practices