Lion. Anchorite dance

This video art is based on a documented performance from the period in which Anchorite dance began to take shape as a distinct method within my practice.

 The initial impulse was a visit to the zoo: the work opens with a lion pacing inside its cage, accompanied by the voice of a child exclaiming, “Look, a lion!” This scene sets a framework for examining states of confinement, solitude, and the reflexive behaviors produced by imposed isolation.

Historically, the anchorite was a figure of religious withdrawal, a body placed in conditions of radical seclusion. In this work, that condition is reframed through performance: ordinary domestic space becomes a temporary cloister, and improvisational movement operates as a form of embodied ritual. What emerges is not choreography but a system of reflexive improvisations, where repetitive gestures echo the compulsions of captivity while opening toward states of trance and transformation. The piece is built on live instrumental and vocal improvisation, establishing a parallel continuum of sound and movement. The everyday environment is displaced into a ritual field, where instinct and discipline, captivity and transcendence intersect. Anchorite dance is understood here as a methodological development: a practice that reclaims isolation as a generative condition and redefines the body as a site of both repetition and revelation.