Breaking time on the wheel

DANCERAMICS

Amanda Apetrea and Benjamin Quigley Revolve 2026: Dreams and Dissent May 22–23, 2026

Various venues, Uppsala

Photo: Pär Fredin for Uppsala konstmuseum

The overall concept and structure of DANCERAMICS  become clear after sitting with the work for about ten minutes. The show — part of Revolve Performance Art Days 2026 in Uppsala — continues for more than three hours, however, gathering gravity all the while and emitting provocations. Co-created and performed by Amanda Apetrea and Benjamin Quigley, DANCERAMICS can be summarized as follows:

A DJ and technician (Erik Valentin Berg, who himself performed during Weld’s 20th anniversary festival in March) sits at a table near the wall and plays a sequence of mostly well-known music of various genres by artists such as David Bowie, Metallica, Oasis, and Lola Young. Two people, completely naked except for the kneepads they wear, meet near the start of each track atop a circular stage. They organize their bodies into a complicated, sometimes physically demanding or even dangerous pose. Each time the chorus of the tune plays, the stage rotates like a turntable, allowing viewers seated around the room’s perimeter to observe Apetrea and Quigley’s assembly from all angles. Between these encounters, the two might rest, rehydrate, or pace around the room. A few freestanding easels display sketches of their many poses, named and labeled like storyboards, and other notes from the creative process.

To paraphrase photographer and writer Erol Ozan, among others, to dance is to create a series of sculptures, each visible for a mere moment. DANCERAMICS  isolates this idea, as one might select a single fruit from a bushel of oranges, chops it in two, and reams the halves until only pith and rind remain. While onstage, Apetrea and Quigley often present themselves in extremis. One might stand victorious, flexing both biceps while grinning widely, their bare foot firmly on the back of the other person, who lies prone. The dominant partner in one arrangement, who uses both hands to fish-hook the other’s mouth wide open to expose all of their teeth and gums, might two minutes later display a submissive grimace, their genitals firmly in the other’s grasp. Some poses are like freeze frames from dramatic scenes of domestic violence (shown while Elvis Presley’s “Jailhouse Rock” plays) or of vigorous coitus (scored by Mozart’s “Rondo alla Turca”). Some poses tempt you to giggle. Some are heroic. Some make you want to intervene.

Six pages of program notes confirm the work’s apparent inquiries and conceptual bases. Apetrea’s analytical text asks multiple questions, for example: “Can one separate heterosexual desire from heteronormativity and patriarchal structures of oppression?” She quotes Ilse Trees Ghekiere of Engagement Arts — a movement to address abuses of power, transgressive behavior, and sexism in the cultural sector — and shares an observation that the female-male duet in dance is “a form where romance and violence seep into each other.”

Quigley’s energetic, five-part text reads more like a manifesto and quotes Swedish poet Bruno K. Öijer: Jag önskar att allt var annorlunda. He notes how easily and often we can “identify the obstacle keeping us from moving forward” yet how rarely and slowly we course-correct. “We should use our bodies to push culture forward — faster,” Quigley argues. “We must not stop!”

Even so, the source of much of this work’s great power is stillness. During the pair’s poses that were most acrobatic, one could plainly see the physical exertion required to maintain form and avoid collapse. Quigley braced his abdominal wall to cantilever half his body weight horizontally until he trembled, his feet flexed to make anchors around his partner’s tightly folded arms. At times I winced, imagining how much stress a knee or elbow of Apetrea’s was under. When they separated, I would sometimes notice a new red mark or other evidence of dermal friction. They got sweaty. They breathed audibly. Quigley inserted and removed a mouth guard a few times. Both seemed to have blackened their teeth for the performance, giving each pained rictus an even more medieval cast. Together, they made Berninis, Eldhs, and Rodins.

Despite the pop soundtrack, the two seem to have been aiming for something elemental and primal with DANCERAMICS. The rotating stage, in conjunction with the title, is easily imagined as a potter’s wheel. The work, according to Revolve’s description, “is based on the idea of the future as something malleable, like clay.”

It does remind you, like some dances so effectively do, that the body (and thus the self and, by extension, a society) can do at every moment what it decides, and that it need not simply repeat what it has done before. Each time one of their physical structures dissolved, Apetrea and Quigley led by example and dared us all to make better choices. We made this shape together, their rests suggested, but just for a while, and then we destroyed it to make room for something else.

Zachary Whittenburg

Zachary Whittenburg has been a journalist, administrator, photographer, and grantmaker in arts and culture since 2008. A regular contributor to Dance Magazine and former dance editor at Time Out Chicago magazine, he has written for numerous additional publications including Critical Correspondence, Critical Read, Dance International, Flavorwire, Pointe, and Total Theatre UK.