At Dublin Dance Festival 2026, Suspended Chorus by Silvia Gribaudi invites audiences into something that resists easy definition. A performance shaped in real time by those in the room, the work unfolds as a shared situation. She takes to the stage all by herself. But she is not alone.
Rather than observing from a distance, audiences are drawn into a space where attention, presence and connection become the material itself. We spoke with Silvia about the thinking behind the work and what it means to create a chorus that exists between us.
Can you introduce Suspended Chorus to audiences who might be encountering it for the first time?
Suspended Chorus is not a piece you watch. It is a situation you enter. Bodies are there – exposed, resisting, existing together. Not perfect, not synchronised, not safe. A chorus without agreement. A temporary community that might fail… or might suddenly work. The chorus of Suspended Chorus is something to be discovered, it is not on stage, and it is not in the audience. We create it together. It is about staying in the present, together, and having the courage to look into each other’s eyes.
The piece asks questions like “What moves us?” and “What cages us?” Where did these ideas come from?
From observing how we live inside invisible systems. We move, but often inside structures we do not choose. The cage is not always violent, sometimes it is polite, efficient, even seductive. That is why it is difficult to leave.
Your work often combines humour and vulnerability. Why is that balance important?
Because I don’t trust purity. Too much vulnerability becomes spectacle. Too much humour becomes defence. I stay in the tension, where something unstable, and maybe honest, can happen. I bring failure on stage. I try to sing that failure. I try to find a resource inside every failure. Suspended Chorus laughs at a drama, the drama of being together and trying to understand each other.
You perform the piece yourself; how does your own body shape the choreography?
My body is not neutral. It never has been. It carries history, projections, resistance. On stage, I don’t try to fix it , I expose it. Sometimes it obeys. Sometimes it sabotages everything. Both are useful. I bring both my ability and my inability to stay inside the story of the performance.
Audience interaction plays a central role, how do you invite the audience into the work, and what kind of experience can they expect?
I don’t “include” the audience. They are already inside. Their presence changes the piece, their attention, their discomfort, their refusal. There is no safe distance. But in a gentle way, a small society appears in the theatre, trying to understand itself. They can expect to be implicated, but not forced.
A chorus that doesn’t begin on stage. A gathering that forms in real time. A space where something might fail or unexpectedly hold. Step inside and see what happens.
Suspended Chorus runs at Project Arts Centre from Tue 12 – Wed 13 May at 7:30PM.
A huge thank you to Silvia Gribaudi for this generous insight, offering something to look forward to, and to reflect on even before experiencing it live.
Read the full interview here.
