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 five live performative readings broadcast live across the internet via existing streaming platforms throughout the month of June.
For the first iteration of Felt the Moonlight on my Feet tap dancer 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, conceived especially for the context of online-streaming, 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.
The Finnish Cultural and Academic Institutes’ Together Alone project has commissioned a series of new, live performances of Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself. The performative ‘readings’ will take place 5 times, broadcast live from the location of Pezo’s studio and her surroundings in Antwerp, Belgium. Consistent with Ruscica, Pezo and Watson’s practices to date, the collaborative work explores the intersections between language, place, culture, sculpture, sound, theatre and performance, posing questions relating to the processes of translation, cultural representation and communication.
Felt the Moonlight on my Feet streaming online in June every Tuesday at 20:00 (CET) via feltthemoonlight.xyz