june 7th 2019.

[corepower]

Back page of Metro EN.

COUNTRY OF CHILDISH THINGS
by Alizée Niang

(b. 1994) Resident dancer with Musai Dance, formerly employed with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater (USA), has lived in Copenhagen since 2017. Will be responsible for the back page column June through August, writing about her favourite places in the city to see as a foreigner.

It was a summer-fling, my first meeting with Copenhagen.


Denmark was nothing but a stopover on Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s tour around Europe, lasting exactly 48 hours from touchdown to takeoff and in that time, we would do three shows. It wasn’t much city we had time to experience in between, but we walked around Tivoli and played tourists, my colleagues and I. It was such a vibrant place, it smelled like cotton candy and popcorn. Circus atmosphere.


Bonjour, my name is Alizée Niang. Originally from Paris, although I stopped over in New York on the way, I have lived the past two years here in Copenhagen. Tivoli remains to me a place of absolute freedom from conventional life, a place of unrestricted fun. Where dance brings out a childish joy of movement, Tivoli brings out the whole child.


In this modern day and age, anything that holds such power must be perceived as borderline divine. Sacred ground, a temple to some otherwise long forgotten and abandoned goddess.


Since Alvin Ailey’s three performances in Tivoli Concert Hall, I haven’t graced that stage, though I have danced in many other venues and visited Tivoli regularly. During summer, I go almost every weekend, because the concerts are free, even if the popcorn aren’t. Free music means ditto motion.


Musai Dance, a local, experimental contemporary dance troupe consisting of myself and 8 other dancers, will be let loose in Tivoli this weekend with our Ball00n program, doing pop-up performances in the narrow pathways running through this last bastion of childhood, so grab the opportunity to forget the grown-up world for a moment, let us find you and let us dance for you.


If it can coax out your inner child, I can promise you a free balloon from the encounter, though no other guarantees can be made. I may fall.


I may fly.