The Syncopators (2022)

The Syncopators is a performance for public space that builds on the solo Fictions of the Flesh (2021) by Fiksdal/Floen/Slåttøy. It draws from the five performers’ physical jazz dance archives and combines them with speculative future fiction from literature and film to inspire new and more-than-human corporealities.

The title springs from the word syncope, which denotes a deviation from an expected rhythmic pattern in music or dance, often placing dynamic accents on weaker beats or omitting stronger beats. Syncopation is a characteristic of jazz dance as a genre and the performance in itself can interrupt the regular flow or habits in a given public space. Furthermore, the title is an allusion on typical science fiction movie titles as inscribed in our cultural memory.

One interest of the work is to problematize the conceptual boundaries of dance-as-art and their close connection with colonial history, and at best to contribute to their expansion.