FRAGMENTOS
Interactive Performance ✿ Solo/Duet ✿ Vantaa, Finland ✿ 2024
Fragmentos — interactive dance project selected for One-Day Stand — an
ongoing performance event series designed to keep the scene active and
responsive between longer-term projects such as Sidewalk and the annual
festival by The Other Side, a performance art platform based in Vantaa, Finland — in collaboration with the Catalysti Transcultural Artists' Association.
© Aman Askarizad
About
I wanted to do something unchoreographed on purpose — a piece that let me explore what it means to interact authentically with a space and with passersby, without knowing what would happen or how I would carry myself into the next moment. Not knowing was part of the point: it kept the themes of fragility alive in the doing, not just in the concept. It also meant the performance became a one-time-only experience, something that could only happen the way it happened, growing organically out of that specific presence, that specific street, those specific people.
The process was entirely organic — live, interactive, non-choreographed. It relied on people approaching me, and just as much on me daring to approach others. That act of initiating always carries a risk, both emotional and physical. Physically, there was real tension in the body, something close to a fight-or-flight response. Emotionally, I felt exposed: sometimes vulnerable, sometimes lonely, sometimes held. Not everyone interacted directly — some simply watched, which I came to understand as its own form of interaction. Being observed rather than approached shifted something in me, and that feeling of being watched became its own material, something I could move from and let shape the contemporary dance vocabulary of the piece.
Safety and care were central to the work. Attention was continuously given to others' signals and openness — how people communicate, through their body and presence, whether they are available to interact or not — and to how that communication, or its absence, landed in my own body: how I moved, how I occupied the space, what emotions arrived, passed through, and which ones stayed. In practice, that meant observing before approaching, its own kind of experiment in instinct and attention. The event itself held a wider structure of care: organizers were present, security was nearby, and other performers were sharing the same space, running their own pieces, workshops, and open demonstrations alongside mine.
© Aman Askarizad
What I carried
Two objects held the piece together. A bucket of water sat beside me for the duration, a quiet symbol of the effort it takes to nurture a relationship — personal or collective — and the attention that keeps it alive. No water was wasted; it stayed there, tended, for as long as I did.
Around it, flowers — small pieces we give to others, and pieces we keep for ourselves. Some I offered. Some stayed with me. Which ones moved, and which ones didn't, became part of the piece's own quiet arithmetic.
NOTES
Waiting
For a while, no one came. I knelt by the bucket, the flowers still there, and felt the particular sadness of being unseen — of offering something and having it pass unnoticed. Then a man approached. He took one of the flowers and gave it back to me. I don't know if he understood what was happening. I'm not sure it mattered. That moment was caught on camera, and I'm so glad it was.
Contact, and its edges
At one point I thought we had made contact — I moved toward someone who wasn't expecting to be seen. They startled, and so did I. For a second neither of us knew what would happen next. They were just surprised, perplexed. I moved away quickly. We both recovered. The street does that; it absorbs a moment and keeps moving.
None of what I felt arrived in turns. Nervous, scared, happy, sad, disappointed, joyful — all of it, all at once. There's something about performing on the street that is raw in a way a stage isn't. Intimidating, yes, but also alive. Curiosity came easily. So did shyness, right alongside it.
A familiar face
I knew my partner was coming, though not exactly when or where. Seeing someone familiar in that space lifted something in me, and it also made me notice, by contrast, which strangers I felt drawn to approach and which ones I didn't. What felt familiar. What felt unknown. Looking back, the piece had been asking that question all along.
What I love most
Beyond everything else, what stays with me is this: for a moment, even just a second, the people I encountered also became performers. They didn't know it. But they were.
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