Online every Tuesday at 20:00 via www.feltthemoonlight.xyz

'Felt the Moonlight on my Feet' is a collaborative work by Jani Ruscica and tap-dancer Suzanna Pezo developed with producer and curator Sam Watson. The work is a newly conceived iteration of an ongoing collaborative project, specifically in the context of our current, shared situation, with a series of 5 live performative readings broadcast live via existing streaming platforms throughout the month of June.

For the first iteration of the work, developed and presented at M HKA in 2017, Suzanna Pezo was presented with three pieces of poetry chosen by Ruscica in part due to their political and social censorship during the course of their existence. Each poem was translated into Morse Code, itself then further translated and interpreted by Pezo into a piece for tap, performed using specially crafted shoes utilising wool-felt in place of the usual metal-taps.

In this latest development of the work, Suzanna Pezo will translate the poem ‘Song of Myself’ by American humanist, poet, essayist and journalist Walt Whitman (1819-1892) into a new dance piece.

Following its 1855 publication, "Song of Myself" was censored across America but was later heralded as one of the most acclaimed and influential pieces in American poetry, for both its use of language and its vision of equality. It has been said that the key to understanding the poem lies in the "concept of self" as "both individual and universal", in which the "self" serves as a human ideal that is synonymous with the collective common (people) rather than as the hero. Nevertheless, Whitman locates heroism in every individual as an expression of the whole.

The performative ‘readings’ will take place 5 times, broadcast live from the location of Pezo’s studio and her surroundings in Antwerp

Commissioned by The Finnish Cultural and Academic Institutes’ 'Together Alone' project #finnishInstitutes #togetheralonefi

Artists: Jani Ruscica, Suzanna Pezo