
The Intervention of Loneliness
(Lockdown Edition)
An online collaborative dance performance using Zoom
What would our life become without touch? Are we destined to become a society of lonely individuals? Or will we develop new ways of slow-dancing?
The Intervention of Loneliness (Lockdown Edition) takes place at the boundary between reality and imagination, distancing and intimacy, isolation and togetherness. The original stage version explored the potential of slow dance as a tool of empowerment against systemic loneliness and the human disconnection we experience today. The performance invited the audience to step into a tender slow dance with one another onstage.
In this special edition, I invite the audience once again to slow dance, but this time over Zoom. Streamed live from Berlin, this performance takes the pandemic as its starting point. In this peculiar time of lockdowns and social distancing, we turn to the online medium to connect with one another. Merging artificiality with hyper-reality, the online space is where we are present and yet also absent, private but also public. Through the seemingly impossible task of slow dancing on Zoom, it attempts to re-examine our notion of touch and physical connection. At the same time, it is an experiment in radical envisioning, asking us about the kind of human relationships we want in the future.
Commission: Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay, Singapore for da:ns festival 2020
Premiere: 16th and 17th October 2020
Artistic Team
Concept & choreography : Ming Poon
Multimedia design & direction : Jonathan Florez
Video & graphic design : Celia Staffa
Music : Le-Thanh Ho
Dramaturgy : Dandan Liu
Choreographic assistant : Sophie Schultze-Allen
Zoom assistant : Natalie Florez
IT technician : Rodrigo Diaz Gutierrez
Voice-overs : Miguel Verde & AngieM
Production manager : Saskia Ottis