Boaz Barkan
Familiedansen

How do families cope with the banality of everyday life? What is a family anyway? And what happens when you invite a real family on stage? 
Familiedansen is a performance that invites audience to come and experience the phenomenon of FAMILY unfold on stage with “real” family members as performers. 

In this performance choreographer Boaz Barkan examines what it means to be a family in today’s Denmark – where 37 different family-types are registered. Viewed through a dance-lens the family becomes a performance, a choreography of bodies, relationships, and actions. Not to forget the familiar situations from everyday life such as sitting around the dinner table, having arguments, hanging out, and all the expected situations that are part of the family package.

Family life is a complex dance of visible and invisible forces of love, power, preconceptions and care. 

The traditional nuclear family is still promoted as an ideal, an institution for bringing about social progress by raising and forming the ’optimal’ citizens. Yet the family is also a living, moving and struggling organism. Barkan examines how families become entangled in a multitude of embodied negotiations, functions and expectations. 

Familiedansen is a culmination of many movement-sessions with different families, playing games, and performing improvisations, scores and rituals. These many sessions and families formed the basis for the performance. 

Artist

Boaz Barkan

Title

Familiedansen

Type

Children & Family, Performance

Date

  • 28.4.2023, 19:00
  • 29.4.2023, 17:00
  • 30.4.2023, 15:00

Duration

1 hour

Venue

Dansekapellet, Bispebjerg Torv 1, 2400 København

Credits

Instruction and concept: Boaz Barkan. Cast: (The families) Afua, Abena, Li, Ludolf, Elva, Valter Ask, Elva Sól, Thorbjørn, Vicky & Egill. Choreographer: Boaz Barkan and the Families. Dramaturgical consultant: Anika Barkan. Set designer: Seimi Nørregaard. Lighting Designer: Ted Pierce. Composer: Emil Vodder Kristensen. Photo/video: Malle Madsen. Co-producer: Dansehallerne. The performance is supported by the Danish Arts Council, the Wilhelm Hansen Foundation

Wilhelm Hansen Fonden (en)
Danish Arts Foundation (en)