Kadri Sirel, a charismatic dancer of Estonian origin, and Zelda, a fictional character conceived as a fictional artificial intelligence have designed a mind-map of their own. Together, Kadri and Zelda try to solve the mystery behind the process of remembering a choreography spontaneously created, but never properly presented. Built with irony and relaxation, the relationship between the two is dynamic and uncertain. The presence of the public raises questions about how a performance should be viewed and what is the role of each participant in this exchange of information and emotions.
Simona Deaconescu is a Romanian choreographer and filmmaker working across genres and formats. She examines social constructs, at the border of fiction and objective reality, sometimes with irony and black humor. She received the danceWEB scholarship in Vienna (2014), the National Centre for Dance in Bucharest Award (2016), was an Aerowaves Twenty18 Artist, and a Springboard Danse Montréal Emerging Choreographer in 2019. In the past two years, she has been an artist in residence with the European Projects Moving Digits and Biofriction. Her works were selected and presented in festivals and conventional stages, unconventional spaces, cinemas, galleries and museums, architectural sites, and family houses, reaching audiences from Europe and beyond. In 2014, she founded her own project-based company, Tangaj Collective, and since 2015 she has been the co-founder and artistic director of Bucharest International Dance Film Festival.
The project is produced by Tangaj Dance Association and co-financed by the Administration of the National Cultural Fund. The project partners are Hochschule Düsseldorf – University of Applied Sciences, LAVAlabs Studio Dusseldorf, Antares International (scaune.ro). The project does not necessarily represent the position of the National Cultural Fund Administration. AFCN is not responsible for the content of the project or how the project results can be used. These are entirely the responsibility of the beneficiary of the funding. The idea behind “virtual (living) room” was born in 2019, when choreographer Simona Deaconescu, the artist who signs the performance concept, was selected as a resident artist of the European program Moving Digits – Augmented Dance for Engaged Audiences, in which she benefited from residencies creation at Sõltumatu Tantsu Lava (Tallinn, Estonia) and tanzhaus nrw (Dusseldorf, Germany), a project co-financed by Creative Europe – Culture Subprogramme, 2018 – Education, Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA).
