Secondhand Knowledge is a research project between Rósa Ómarsdóttir and Ásrún Magnúsdóttir where they look at dance history through the eyes of the geographical periphery of Europe.

Coming from Iceland, a very isolated island way up in the north, they realized that their perception of dance history was maybe not the same one as has been written about in central Europe. Their knowledge was mostly received second hand from the eurocentrically claimed history of dance. When their only insight into what was going on in the dance world was through YouTube trailers of dance pieces, they found themselves filling in the gaps and imagining what the rest of those trailers was. Often this misinterpretation lead to something completely different.

Having a strong belief in the value of knowledge that is received secondhand, interpreted and often mistranslated, Rósa and Ásrún will travel through the periphery of Europe and work with people to discover their perception of history. By willingly dwelling in this so called secondhand knowledge, they will make, remake and reconstruct danceworks that were important to them and others, with full artistic freedom to fill in the gaps. They will somewhat bypass the traditional sense of dance history, from the ballet tradition, as it is mostly irrelevant to our own history and many others we will work with, and focus mostly on people’s own influences and their relation to history.

About Rósa Ómarsdóttir

Rósa Ómarsdóttir is an Icelandic choreographer based in Brussels. She studied dance and choreography at the Icelandic Academy of the Arts and in P.A.R.T.S. in Brussels from where she graduated in 2014. In 2015 Rósa received a DanceWeb scholarship to attend Impulstanz. She has made several performances with Inga Huld Hákonardóttir where they focus on sound production using various objects and look for different associations between sound and movement, amongst them «Radiodance» and «Wilhelm Scream». They received the Icelandic Theater awards for their duet «The Valley» in 2015. Her latest production «Da Da Dans» was made for the Icelandic Dance Company in November 2016. Her work has been shown in festivals and theatres around Europe.

www.ingaandrosa.com