A message and invite from SWARM
DEAR RADICAL GUIDE READER,
We are so glad that our words meet your eyes. SWARM is our name, and we are coming to London. This letter is a kind invitation for you to join our dance, and swarm together through the streets of London. It is an invitation to create a dance of urgency as a peaceful answer to the current political context regarding public space gatherings.
WHY
In 2022 the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act came into effect, and in May 2023 the Public Order Act was added. These Acts place severe restrictions on the rights to protest, increase police racism and discrimination. As a result, the Acts limit the possibilities of what a protest can be, and bring more risks to the people participating in them.
We are grateful to those who came before us. None of the successes of the Civil Rights Movement, the Suffragettes, Gay Liberation Front, or Reclaim the Streets, that we enjoy today, would have been achieved without some form of civil disobedience.
Swarm is a celebration of our capacity to gather. Our dance is a reminder that gathering and protest are an act of love, and there is no love without disruption.
WHO
The practice of the SWARM emerged during the Covid 19 – pandemic in Rotterdam as a way to come together, through the cracks of the social distancing policies.
From 2020 on we continued swarming with Tools for Action, Simomo Bouj and more, under the name RÆV REHEARSAL, dancing through the streets of various dutch cities.
With a decentralised speaker system, where each of us carried a small speaker playing a live DJ set, we moved through the streets like a radiating dancing swarm. By keeping 3 metres physical distance between us, we proposed an ‘addition’ to the lockdown rules, in which social proximity could emerge.
In this way we formed a porous crowd, where people and other entities in the streets could move through. Encountering a large group of people mostly means you need to move around them, as crowds tend to be dense. Whereas keeping some space in between each other during assemblies, generates more exchange in the streets.
RÆV REHEARSAL completed in 2021. A beautiful journey, exploring the power of collective dancing in public space. It activated many reflections on the purposes of such a practice. What does a dancing swarm mean outside of the pandemic? Through extensive research that has taken place since 2022, we kept on realising, that one of the swarm’s core values is fluidity. A swarm adapts to, negotiates and moves with its context.
We are now swarming with different landscapes, and merge with resonating initiatives, individuals, and collectives internationally. A practice where people encounter and build embodied skills to play with the restrictions on collective movement encountered in public space.
Our core team is composed of:
- Simomo Bouj dancer & choreographer
- Reda Senhaji DJ & Composer
- Floor van Leeuwen choreographer,
- Chung Ching Kwong activist
- Roberto Pérez Gayo social designer
- SasaHara community builder,
In collaboration with the London LGBTQ+ Community Centre, the Art-Raves organiser Riposte, the visual artist Julita Mahrer Viñas, the activists Dani Dinger, and Dan Glass, and Sara Dziri, we are working towards a SWARM in London on the 17th of August.
WHAT
On the 17th of August, we swarm with a group of 100 people departing from Soho Square at 19h. We happily invite you to come and enjoy the tunes of DJ Dziri, encounter people and enjoy the dance.
If you would like to join our SWARM action, sign up at the following link:
Registration form
If you wish to get in touch with us for any inquiry,
email: dancingswarm[at]gmail.com
instagram: @swarm.movement
More information about these Acts you can find in the amazing readers on netpol.org, greenandblackcross.org and libertyhumanrights.org.uk
Photo credit: The Fox Is Mine
