Yelena Arakelow
Yelena Arakelow (1993 in Zürich, Switzerland) is an emerging dance artist living and working in Reykjavík, Iceland. Corporal sustainability defines her experimental dance performances and she is invested in activating the viewers’ sensibility to experience.
Since her graduation in Contemporary Dance from the Iceland University of Arts in 2018 she has worked in interdisciplinary collaborations and exhibited, as well as performed, widely in Iceland and Europe. In 2020 she premiered work (it) out at Tanzhaus Zürich (CH) and collaboratively created with Klāvs Liepiņš mati kreppapīra krāsā / hair in the colour of crepe paper a site-specific outdoor dance performance in Latvia. In 2021 her work dwelling in nothingness was exhibited in á og í ; at Reykjanesbær Art Museum and in the middle of your sternum was screened at Physical Cinema Festival Iceland and Boreal Screendance Festival Akureyri. In the same year, together with Jakub Ziemann she hosted an experimental dinner experience Dear Carrot at the performance festival Plöntutíð as well as dancing for Steinunn Ketils- dóttir in The Practice Performed.
WAITING FOR A DANCE
Waiting for a dance is an experimental performance about the experience of waiting.
Waiting as a physical notion includes dwelling, resting, laying, rolling and walking. What does one experience in the nothingness of waiting? What kind of dance can emerge in that state? In the context of UNM Yelena Arakelow looks at the sonic experience of waiting and plays with expectations of music within dance performances. During the UNM Residency in March 2022 in Reykjavík, she created a visual score that both dancer and musician can read and on which this performance (sound and dance) Waiting for a dance is based.