Another version of the piece Dirgy Dancing was presented at thecarrierbag festival in Copenhagen 2023.

About the piece:
”Dirgy Dancing it is a piece that moves us in the deep. It presses gently on our hearts and rests in our throats, and leaves us with dances and loss. We see a piece that is soft, calm, considered and specific. We see a very simple proposal that speaks and unfolds volumes. An honest container that holds a prism of emotions.”
Curational team of thecarrierbag festival, Emilia Gasiorek & Karis Zidore

 

Dirge – /dɜːrdʒ/ – a lament expressing mourning or grief.

Dirgy Dancing is a collection of lament dances by and with local dancers from different places. Dances that are dedicated to people, memories, times and places, like a way to perceive the unmentionable of what’s lost.

Collectively, we look back at what has been in order to be able to face what comes after, and that there will be an after. The lament dances create space to be in the presence and in care of what has passed and no longer is.

Lisen Ellard works with three local dancers for Dirgy Dancing and at thecarrierbag festival it is lament dances by and with: Johanne Chemnitz, Julienne Doko, Khamlane Halsackda.

Lisen Ellard and director Mattias Lechhave collaborated for several years around themes of death and its rituals, which resulted in the performances Funeral and DEATH. With the dance anthology Dirgy Dancing, Lisen Ellard continues this investigation of loss and the relationship between grief, memory and movement.