Dance – Choreography – Teaching
David Bloom
Performing in Akemi Nagao’s Juicy Metamorphosis
Hello. I’m David Bloom. I’m a choreographer, dancer, teacher, father, filmmaker, pianist, bodyworker, fermenting Jewish mystic, and tea collector.
I graduated from the Academy of Music and Performing Arts (HfMdK) in Frankfurt and the M.A. Choreography course at HZT Berlin, as well as the Urban Tantra Professional Training Program with Barbara Carellas. I was a member of the dance ensemble at Staatstheater Darmstadt, and have collaborated as a dancer on projects by Tino Sehgal, Marco Santi, Nir de Volff/Total Brutal, Micha Purucker, Ingo Reulecke & Lukas Matthaei, Canan Erek, Friederike Plafki, Barbara Bess, Susanna Curtis, Felix Ruckert, Akemi Nagao, Martin Nachbar, and Michael Turinsky.
My sideways career as a pianist has included a brief stint at the bar Marie’s Crisis in New York, and playing for Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch during their Berlin tour.
My dance film trilogy Sex & Space premiered at the Berlin Porn Film Festival and was screened internationally. My choreography has also been shown as part of Tanzfabrik Berlin’s “Open Spaces” Series, at Dock11 Berlin, La Fête du Slip in Lausanne, and the Stockholm Dance Film Festival, and i have made work for the B.A. dance students at the Academy of Music & Performing Arts in Frankfurt. Collaborations as an outside eye have included Lucy Wilke’s & Paweł Dudus’ 2021 production “Scores That Shaped Our Friendship”, which won Munich’s FAUST prize and was invited to the Berliner Theatertreffen. I was a 2012 danceWEB scholar and have taught classes, workshops, and seminars in diverse contexts, including HZT Berlin, Tanzquartier Vienna, Tanzfabrik Berlin, Human Architecture Lab in St. Petersburg, the K3 Center for Choreography in Hamburg, the M.A. of Contemporary Dance Education in Frankfurt, STRETCH Festival Berlin, various editions of the Touch & Play Festival, the Body IQ Festival Berlin, the Rietveld Academie for Fine Arts & Design in Amsterdam, & the ImPulsTanz International Dance Festival in Vienna.
For the past decade or so, my work has revolved around questions of Desire, Intimacy, Boundaries, Power Relationships, Consent, and Group Dynamics. Other interests include Cross-Pollination, Pleasure, Space, Cellular Structures, the Digestive System, Fermentation, Sourdough, Beauty, Breath, Time, Spirit, and Transformation.
Coming soon:
Playing piano for ballet with Tony Rizzi at Marameo Berlin, December 30
Teaching various workshops at the Pandora Festival, near Cologne, January 30 – February 2
Teaching a workshop on Dancing with the Ghosts, at motionlab Cologne, April 5 & 6
For the foreseeable future: PhD Candidate at Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK) and Linz Arts University (Kunstuni Linz) on the topic “DESIRE: Sex, Spirit, & Choreography as Active & Receptive Practices.” The PhD studies are made possible by a generous grant from the Ernst-Ludwig-Ehrlich-Studienwerk (ELES).
More Stuff:
A conversation with me for an episode of Clara Federica Crescini’s podcast COSMOVE, a series of interviews with body practitioners dealing with ecosomatics in various forms. Listen to it (in English) here.
Lukas Matthaei’s project Golden Record Studios, a playful response to NASA’s launch of “Golden Records” into space in 1977, attempting to give a somehow coherent presentation of humanity to potential alien life forms. Read more about the project here, and listen to the episode with me as an “expert” – Dance with an Alien (Spank your Grenzen!) – here. In English and German.
You can also check out my Vimeo page, the trailer for my last solo nigunim, the trailer for the solo before that, Alles Vergängliche, a review of nigunim on Tanzschreiber, contact me, or watch me dance in my kitchen in this episode of video and sound artist Roberto Duarte’s series Noche:
PhD Abstract:
DESIRE – Sex, Spirit, and Choreography as Active and Receptive Practices
This PhD proposal critically examines a particular state of being/thinking/feeling/moving I have been exploring, and sharing with others, in a diverse variety of settings: the moment of a performer and the world they inhabit enacting an erotic relationship to each other.
Can erotic Desire emerge intersubjectively not only between people, but also between a performer and the space itself? And if so, how are the two phenomena connected? In other words, how can we cultivate a consensual erotic relationship to the universe?
I have found Desires between human beings, especially sexual ones, to be easy access points, as there’s a lot of curiosity, fear, and energy around sexuality that doesn’t take much to bubble up, so people are vividly present. Also, it’s fun! 🙂 But the more compelling question to me addresses a performer’s Desires that emerge during performance: for instance, to suddenly change their position in the performance space, their relationship to the audience, or the dynamics of their actions. Not compositional choices based on broad knowledge of improvisation techniques, but a clarity of decision-making in which consciousness is not located entirely within the individual, but rather emerges as an active interplay with their environment. There is often a sense of entering a pre-existing channel: it is clear what needs to happen.
The PhD is intended to articulate a map to expand consensual erotic relationship between humans to eventually include everyone, and everything. It draws on practical strategies from three fields to do so – conscious sexuality practices (such as tantra or BDSM), spiritual practice (particularly mystical Judaism), and art-making (specifically choreography) – and brings them into conversation with each other. It proposes that these strategies for using the body as a channel connecting to something beyond the individual self are all but different aspects of the same prism.