To celebrate the tenth year of If I Can’t Dance, a monthly Dancing Group will be hosted at Veem House for Performance on the second Wednesday of each month across most of 2016, and alongside Edition VI – Event and Duration. The Dancing Group will be led by the Amsterdam based choreographer, Michele Rizzo, who will extend his research into and experience of club dancing by devising a new choreography that the group will be invited to learn and interpret.

The Dancing Group is designed for people from inside and outside the field of contemporary art who are interested in dancing together in a studio setting. Prior dance experience is not required. Places are limited and interested participants should register by sending an email to bookings@ificantdance.org.

Through the Dancing Group, If I Can’t Dance pays homage to Emma Goldman’s famous quote, “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution” from which it takes its name and continues to draw inspiration to explore the critical and celebratory dimensions in contemporary performance, curatorial and theoretical practices. The Dancing Group also forms a pendant to If I Can’t Dance’s long running monthly Reading Group, through an investment in the knowledge inherent in the body and its social movement.

About Michele Rizzo

Michele Rizzo is active in performance, dance, music and visual arts, and graduated from the Dirty Art Department, Sandberg Instituut, Amsterdam in 2015, and the School of New Dance Development (SNDO), Amsterdam in 2011.

His choreographic work often revolves around ontological thought on the definition of the self, and its inscription in the cultural-sociological context; concepts of origin and flow, and their implication within the development of creative practices; and the use of artistic processes as models for self-actualization. In the past few years he has been working with various artists, such us Julian Hetzel, Gertjan Franciscus, Vincent Riebeek, Igor Dobricic, and the musicians LVM and Lorenzo Senni.

Throughout 2014 and 2015, his research has been focused on the phenomenon of club dancing, which he has developed into performances, installations and workshops. Among others, one of the inspirations for this project is philosopher Julia Kristeva, who once said, that as what it means “to be human embraced political, sexual, religious, familiar identity, we are undergoing a time of major identity crises. We need to find a language that transcends the human in order to overcome such crises and awake a new Renaissance. This language can be dance”. Through this research into club dancing, Michele Rizzo explores the power of dance as a choreographic potential (technical and political, with various techniques, styles and influences like Gabber and Hard Style), and as a social form of catharsis and celebration.