This work is an invitation to listen: to a body, a dance, a landscape - of sounds and silences becoming  present in one moment and leaving in the next. It is a fluid exploration of dance and how it can be  shaped and experienced if the focus lies not in the eye, but in the ear. How does what we see change, transform, become, appear, disappear or remain if we experience them through their sounds?  

It began through walks through a city and forests, where Sara noticed the effects of listening to the environment on her body: how she moves, is moved and connects and digests inner and outer worlds. This developed into a practice of listening to trees, waters, bodies and as a dance practitioner further to movement. It became a way for her to engage with various layers, which inform, influence and shape her approach to dance. She specifically deals with and listens to the historic, contemporary and mythological narratives and vocabulary of the dance practice Bharatanatyam, a  descendant of the temple and court dances of South India. 

The durational three day work will begin with an opening performance on the first day and invites the audience to spend time in the Listening Room and its changing soundscapes, which will remain open for three days. On the last day the work finds an end through a closing performance.  
 

Participants: Sara Mikolai 
 
Credits: SaraMikolai: performance| installation| sound: concept, recordings, music 
Isuru Kumarasinghe: music | sound design  
 
Thanks: Isuru Kumarasinghe, Diana Mikolai, Alexander G. Roberts, Kiran Kumar, Haraldur Jónsson, Margrét H. Blöndal , Steinunn Ketilsdóttir, Númi Sigurðsson, Egill Ingibergsson, Sigurður A.  Sigurðsson, Helga Dögg.
 
Bio: Sara Mikolai is a Sri Lankan-German interdisciplinary artist. With a background in the South Indian dance practice Bharatanatyam since 1994 through her mother Diana Mikolai, she began working in various performance contexts since 2007. Her main artistic mediums are dance and performance and she further experiments with sound, video and installation works. The focus in her work lies on a critical and poetic engagement with epistemologies of dance through decolonial strategies, queer reclamations and ecological reflections, by diving into a artistic practice, conversation and research. She commits to unravelling the dichotomies of tradition and progress and translating her questions into her practice.  
 
After studying Area Studies of Asia/Africa at the Humboldt University Berlin, at the Interuniversity-Centre for Dance Berlin and further holds a diploma in she graduated in Dance, Context & Choreography Bharatanatyam from the Oriental Fine Arts Academy of London. Currently Sara is deepening her listening practice, in which she explores a dance-sound relationship as part of the MFA in Performing Arts program at the Iceland University of the Arts