The Stillstands

 Zurich, 2020

"The Stillstands is an exploration of people who have experienced a deep break in their lives, triggered by sudden changes in their living conditions (war, exile, pandemic, natural disaster, death) or simply by a life goal left unfulfilled. Such a break can mysteriously give rise to beings within them that no longer evolve. Is it possible to give these hidden beings, the stillstands, a body and a space through dance?" M. Aalaii

When dance training and performances were cancelled in spring 2020, Mansoureh Aalaii started to lead an outdoor training with five dancers, out of what resulted the dance performance The Stillstands, premiered on 30 September 2020 with an outdoor audience.

Looking for a space which could respond to the content of the choreography, our idea was to dance on a stair. The stair as a hurdle and obstacle, as a challenge to reinvent the dance and movement space, but also for it's symbolical and allegorical significance. We wanted to take a stair in midst of the city of Zurich, as an "objet trouvé", and to transform it into the dance space. The positioning of light and the audience where the tools to transform the perception of the space and create an outdoor scene. The lighting concept works with the interplay of natural and artificial light: The dance performance begins at sunset, so that the staircase gradually transforms into an abstract pattern.

The music for the performance was also created in the Lockdown, as an online freestyle concert between the experimental sound artists Har$ in Montreuil, Marc Plas and E_Rébus in Paris, Antoine de Perrot in Zurich. The soundtrack has an open structure, so it easily included unpredictable noises of the passing cars and peoples on the nearby street.

Directors, space, light, costume: Mansoureh Aalaii, Antoine de Perrot


Dancer: Ambra Peyer, Antoinette Berta, Anna Knörr, Nel Bonaventura, Mansoureh Aalaii

Music: Har$, Marc Plas, E_Rébus, Antoine de Perrot

Photos: Claude Hofer, Aalaii & de Perrot