500 Years ago today, a woman, called Frau Troffea started to dance in the Streets of Strasbourg. It wouldn’t have been anything extraordinary if she had stopped after a few minutes or even several hours. But she danced and danced without stopping until she couldn’t stand anymore. After this she fainted and had a rest, but instead of ending this crazy dance, she continued, for days, weeks, months…

 

This is how the Dancing Plague of Strasbourg started 500 years ago - an incident which caused the death of many people through exhaustion, heart attack, hunger and thirst. It affected the whole society during its time, but still after many years it continues to generate intrigue and curiosity. Different archives and sources provide varying statistics and reasons for this incident.

 

Ceren Oran believes it was nothing but a personal breakdown and a protest about life at the time; the hunger, the poverty, the diseases, the misogynist mindset, the breakdown of society, the corrupt church of the Middle Ages... Frau Troffea tried to defeat all these through her dance and save herself and her soul through the trance-like state.

 

Inspired by this incident, Dancing Plague of Strasbourg, the choreographer and dancer Ceren Oran created this durational dance performance in public spaces. The Premiere took place during the DANCE Festival, 2019 for 10 days and 70 Hours. 

 

The more personal the reason why people dance, the more power it has and the more it emotionally touches the ones watching. Personal emotionality expressed by dance is one of the basis for this durational dance performance in the public space. Performers will dance non-stop, the audience (bystanders or bypassers) will see solos, duets, movements by groups in different constellations as well as scenes involving the masses. The dramaturgy of the 11 days will have both different highlights and intense lows due to exhaustion.

 

The different dance motivations create the basis for individual patterns, choreographies and structures for Who is Frau Troffea?, which developes further on stage through repetition, exhaustion and transferring onto the other dancers. All the dancers involved in the process share common goals: to have a unique transformative experience, express their emotional and physical landscapes, as honest as possible, to interact with the public space, fascinate and touch the audience by the images they are creating and generate a curiosity for DANCE and its uniting power!