THE SPONTANEOUS DANCE FALLS is an ongoing artistic research project, which scrutinizes the politics surrounding gestures of collective gathering through the myth of Frau Troffea, the dancing plague of 1518, and the recently abandoned ‘danstillståndet’ or ‘dancing permit’ (1956–2023).

Through the allusion of a dancing woman who may never have existed, the body of work explores various moments of collectivity, myth, mutation, rhythm, hysteria, restriction and exhaustion. Through historical fragments encompassing the medieval period to today, de Voe attempts to understand the relation of dance (movement) and the dance floor as historical expressions of socialist world building and potential arenas of future utopias.

Spanning across sound, image, installation and performance, Stacey de Voe assesses how our relations to one another have been limited by privatisation and exclusion, where the spontaneity of the ‘public realm’ has depended on our capacity to absorb the effects of labour and restriction on our bodies without ever seeming to tire.

The exhibition at skēnē builds on previous paragraphs previously shown at Hägerstensåsens Medborgarhus, Stockholm and Simian, Copenhagen.