Saturday 6 October, 2018

As part of the Klapping project that is currently in development, Campbelltown hip hop dancer Feras Shaheen and former profession footballer and performance-maker Ahil Ratnamohan (Belgium via Western Sydney) are premiering a new dance work at the Nuit Blanche Festival in Brussels.

Feras was recently awarded a Create NSW Artist Support grant to fund his trip and will spend four weeks in Brussels, working with Ahil to develop the new work.

Klapping is a late-night pilgrimage to an abandoned football court, a dance ritual activated by movement, flares, cheers and chorus.

Introducing a new form of urban movement built from the roots of football, training drills, battles and hip hop dance styles, Klapping explores the urban fringes where new expressions of dance have grown over the years, born from social needs and rage.

Utilising this hybrid movement language, two performers take flight at times in a battle over space with vast sweeping movements and gamesmanship, at times in synchronicity, finding common ground and intimacy.  The audience is implicated within the performance, moving to new areas of the court redefined by the performers as the space shifts and changes throughout the work.