Queering the Popular - Reykjavík Dance Festival. November 2014.
Curated by Alexander Roberts and Ásgerður G. Gunnarsdóttir

Back this November, with our final iteration of this year, RDF invites artists and audiences alike to congregate around a programme of work, that brings with it a concern for what pop can do for the localised micro-communities of the stage, the gallery, the music hall, and the cinema. Through choreographies in the form of radio broadcasts, music videos, album making, concerts, t-shirts, pop dances, borderline musicals, blockbuster films and crowd control, RDF's end-of-2014 bonanza continues the festival's enduring focus on working with dancing and choreography to seek out other means and content through which conversations can take place. Conversations that differ from those that currently dominate the popular imaginary, due to 1) what is spoken; 2) who speaks; and 3) how it's said.

Via a full programme of performances, listening parties, dancing parties, danceoke parties, heated debates in the local swimming pool, as well as a continuation of RDF's Radio Dance Forum (an on-going series of choreographed radio pieces – realised in collaboration with national radio culture show Viðsjá) – the invitation is to come together in queerful wondering; to speculate on how the choreographies that make up this programme invite us to listen, watch and engage; do, make, say and think; care, feel, love and share. Put simply, the invitation is to congregate around a seriousness for dancing and choreography.

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS FOR THIS EDITION INCLUDE:  

Halla Ólafsdóttir (ÍS/SE) and Amanda Apetrea (SE) Ásrún Magnúsdóttir (ÍS) and Alexander Roberts (ÍS/UK) Christian Falsnaes (DK/DE) Choreography Reykjavík (ÍS) Erna Ómarsdóttir, Valdimar Jóhannsson and Shalala (ÍS) Kriðpleir (ÍS) Juli Reinartz (DE) Nadja Hjorton (SE) Ula Sickle (CA/PL)

Events took place at Tjarnarbío, Mengi, the Reykjavík Dance Atelier, the National Broadcasting House, the Reykjavík Art Museum, and the Iceland University of the Arts.

The events were supported by Reykjavík City, the Nordisk Kulturfond, Kulturkontakt Nord and the Iceland Ministry of Culture and Education.