maria mercedes: Ballade

Ballade is an encounter with emotions. Ballade explores how they affect the way bodies form. Ballade collides, turns, sticks, circulates and organizes itself. Ballade curls up into a tear, hidden under a mountain of hair. Ballade is a dance song and a poem with dramatic elements. Ballade departs from the notion of friendship. A collective endeavour and balancing act of taring and negotiating. Movements emerge from of a base of memories and trust. They unfold in a whirl of lifting each other up, taking along and pushing upside down. Meanwhile a minnesinger sings a song. One year of shared space and time accumulates in a love letter to companionship and past and future dances. It is a collection of encounters that are put together to form a choreography embracing gaps and imaginative occurrences. It appears, vanishes, and surfaces again, just like lovers do. The work opens up as a collaborative, fluctuating space where roles can shift and multiple presences are borne.