‘L’incorruptible’

According to contemporary reports, eccentric poet and dancer Valentin Parnakh’s ‘lying down dance’ caused a sensation in 1922. The only recording made of the dance has gone missing from the Moscow archives. Dancer Polina Akhmetzyanova examines the link between the lost footage of the artist’s work and how the post-revolutionary context favoured its disappearance through a reading/performance that explores the relation between the ‘lying down dance’ and the practice of human mummification: “What would a centenary dance be like? The disappearance fascinated me, as does the aura of mummies that have been preserved for centuries, lying on their backs and uncomfortably dry.”

Polina Akhmetzyanova was born in Russia and studied dance and performance aan het North Karelia College of Outokumpu in Finland and with P.A.R.T.S. in Brussels.