Rather than choreographing bodies, Discotexture choreographs the conditions through which dance can emerge: body, painting, place, sound….

DISCOTEXTURE​

​

What happens when people who, by chance, decide to spend an evening together meet in a specific place at a specific time? In this space, there is no central figure, no leader, guru, or teacher. No one provides answers, but questions are asked. Perhaps there is music, a voice, images. What do I want to do in this space? If I experience safety, my toes spread, my joints discover pulse, my jaw relaxes.

Response to the song
Attention
Observation
Impulses
How to liberate it?

Perhaps I hold myself back. There are boundaries. Who created, defined, and implanted those boundaries? Who is that colonizer? Since when have I myself become my own colonizer?

Social norms
Shame of one‘s own body
Self-perception
“Dance must look good”
Vulnerability

I feel emotions, I allow myself to feel and notice them. I do not deny them, I do not defend myself against them. There are so many of them. I think thoughts, allowing them to dance their own dance. A dance of conditioning, judgments, and norms. My body responds - to thoughts, feelings, music, or its absence.

“To dance, you need music”
Necessary condition for dance to happen

So many favorable conditions are needed for my dance to happen. A dance among others and with others. Unlearned and liberated from ideological and culturally racist standards. Perhaps that is impossible. But if I tried, what would I lose? And what would I discover?

Memory
Soul’s scream
Collective
Changing
Individual*

I feel the texture of dance on my skin, I find my place in space, I occupy it with my body and abandon it, occupy and abandon it again. This place belongs to me and does not belong to me at the same time. Shapes change, light and shadows change. I have never been here before. In this moment, among these people. I find my axis, yet new blooms unfold around it. My soul sings in this disco, because here, being becomes more important than performing.

*words in a column: reflections from participants of the “Unlearning Dance” events.

DISCOTEXTURE  - Performative Disco Exhibition

 

2026 05 06 premier Retrito Smarsas gallery, Vilnius

​

Artists: 

Indrė Ercmonaitė - Painting / @indre_ercmonaite

Indrė Gin - Choreography / @ginindre

saulė nori - Performance / @sauleishere

DJ SOTO

Giedrius Satkūnas – Coordination

The project is financed by the Lithuanian Council for Culture..

____________________________________

Text by Ugnė Sasnauskaitė

 

Discotexture is a hybrid spectacle and experience that can be interpreted in many ways without any of them being wrong. The stomping on the wooden floors of Retrito smarsas, with visitors’ bodies immersed in smoke and lights, evokes the familiar feeling of an old-school disco in a school assembly hall. The guests’ first awkward movements along the walls before a collective dance ignites only reinforce this impression. Perhaps the unlearning concept proposed by the event’s creator, Indrė Gin, and her collaborators intentionally guides us toward such corners of memory. In her events, the choreographer uses prompting questions, the first of which invites participants to peel back learned layers and return to childhood by asking themselves: “What was dance to me when I was little?” The initial awkwardness, the tendency to rely on those who seem to know better, also surfaces in the unfolding of Discotexture, as eyes wander around the room and the body tries to understand the rules of this game. In the middle of the space, DJ SOTO plays for us, while saulė nori weaves dreamy melodies with her voice.

As the smoke gradually dissipates, the outlines of paintings begin to emerge. Yet the dance interpretations painted by Indrė Ercmonaitė reveal themselves only when viewed up close. The content is tempting, compelling one to move from their spot and carve new trajectories with their own steps – from painting to painting. It seems that this very impulse brings us closer to the second question: “What is dance?” Emerging from the static state of a spectator, the body performs the very first dance of this evening and of life itself – walking. Bodies wandering, waiting, chatting, and some still standing timidly in place reveal the broad spectrum of dance and the diverse palette of visitors. Some seem to know exactly why they came, stamping their feet to the rhythm before it has even fully taken hold, while others lean against windowsills and walls, waiting for a stronger external stimulus.

As the rhythm bursts forth, more movement begins to manifest. The creator of the gathering gently encourages the visitors through her own body language, introducing an impulse that immediately receives a collective response. People begin changing places more boldly, transforming from visitors into co-creators who fill the space with their moving bodies. The music dictates mood, space, and era, while those in motion surrender to this dictation in different ways: for some, it is a flight into an oasis of togetherness; for others, it is nothing less than a cardio workout; and the traces of yet others have already cooled – their bodies have moved elsewhere to dance verbal dances instead. Somewhere around here, I feel the third question emerges: “What is dance now?” When we shed the layers of how we are “supposed” to be, when we allow ourselves to be tired or energetic and be content with either state, when we permit ourselves to admit that we have had enough or that we still want more, when we grant ourselves the freedom to move as much as we want and wherever we wish – or perhaps realize that the windowsill has grown warm beneath us and that this was exactly the kind of dance we needed tonight.

​