Bodies of Rituals – panel discussion

How can the body become a site of resistance, memory and transformation?

This panel discussion brings together artists whose practices challenge dominant ideas of the body, identity, ability, and representation. Through trans embodiment, radical physicality, ritual, and ancestral knowledge, the speakers explore how dance and performance can reclaim narratives, question systems of power, and create spaces for alternative forms of knowledge. What can bodies remember, resist, and transmit—and how can choreography open up new ways of seeing, relating, and imagining together?

Speakers

● Annabel Guérédrat – Martinican artist working with ritual, performance, and Afro-feminist aesthetics. Her work Let’s go back to the river draws on Caribbean spirituality and collective ritual, exploring care, motherhood, and ancestral transmission through immersive performance.

● Daniel Mariblanca – Barcelona-born, Bergen-based dancer and choreographer and transactivist whose work centers on trans identity, embodiment, and the politics of representation. Mariblanca has developed a distinctive practice blending vulnerability, physical intensity, and poetic expression. Daniel explores gender, intimacy, and lived experience with radical honesty. Mariblanca has collaborated widely across Europe and creates works that foreground trans narratives within contemporary dance, merging personal storytelling with rigorous choreographic craft.

● Diana Niepce – Portuguese choreographer whose work confronts bodily norms, hierarchy, and violence. Through radical physicality, Niepce challenges stereotypes and exposes systems of oppression embedded in representations of the body.

● Bára Sigfúsdóttir, from Iceland, is an Oslo-based dancer and choreographer. Her artistic work explores the relationship between humans, nature, and society. Drawing on key themes and questions, she examines these through the moving body in a poetic, detailed, and vivid manner.

● Jonas Øren, moderator: Dance artist, choreographer and writer based in Oslo. He holds a BA in Classical Ballet and an MA in Dance from Oslo National Academy of the Arts (KHiO), and also works as a communications consultant at Dansens Hus. Øren has previously written for Norsk Shakespearetidsskrift (Norwegian Shakespeare Journal) and served as editor of the publication SKEIV BEVEGELSE (Queer Movement).