We live in a world pulled at the seams – marked by conflict, contradiction, and chaos. Every step forward carries resistance. Every breath is a negotiation, with a hope for the future.

In Insight, Heine Avdal and Yukiko Shinozaki explore the shifting relation between the individual and the collective. The work draws on the metaphor of string figures – fragile patterns spun between hands – to ask how we open and close ourselves to others, and how each act shapes the whole.

The community in Insight is fragile, flexible, and constantly shifting. The dancers move within a system that never stands still, where attention, rhythm, and relation must be renegotiated in the moment. What emerges is togetherness as practice – always in motion, never final.

Just as in the game of string figures where a loop of thread is passed from hand to hand, the result is dependent on balance and attention. Pull too hard and the figure breaks; hold too loosely and it unravels. Each gesture alters the whole, just as each decision in a community shifts the collective.

The choreographers call this search moving as a democratic body – a practice where each individual matters through the way they act in relation to the whole.

How can we move without breaking each other?

About Heine Avdal & Yukiko Shinozaki

Heine Avdal and Yukiko Shinozaki are based in Brussels and Oslo. Since beginning their collaboration in 1996 and later co-founding the company fieldworks, they have created more than 25 performances presented in over 30 countries.

Together they explore performativity as a porous and shifting interplay of movement, sound, image and technology. Drawing from a wide range of disciplines, their work creates layered performances where dance becomes an expanded field of inquiry. With sensitivity to both the organic and the artificial, they blur boundaries – crafting spaces where new meanings can emerge, quietly or unexpectedly.

At the heart of their work lies a desire to reimagine the body’s relationship to its surroundings, and to invite audiences into this ongoing act of discovery. In 2025, they received the Hedda Award for until, which premiered at Dansens Hus in Oslo.