How much action is needed to form a collective? How much collective action is needed to make a change? Tentative explores the possibilities of constantly entering and exiting temporary collectives. At this moment of wars and crises, people feel a need to gather in collectives and experience togetherness. This desire has the potential for societies to experiment with new ways of being together, but at the same time, it holds the risk of being dictated by former traditions with totalitarian tendencies. With Tentative, we constitute a small temporary collective, which dares to explore these questions of individuality and collectivity, of tradition and progress. How equal must individuals be in order to form a collective, and how much difference is needed to avoid a homogenous culture?

Each person has a responsibility to engage in the collective effort in order for the construct to continue. However, this will constantly force the individual to reflect on whether they accept the current flow of the social culture, or if they wish to criticise the current state and propose something new.

Imagine a tower being built. You are working on it, and suddenly you find a mistake in the construction, and you start to question the stability of the whole construction. Do you continue building the tower, blindly trusting that the collective knows how to deal with a potential collapse? Or do you take responsibility to cancel the project and propose something else? Tentative looks for new possibilities that lay in between the either-or mode of thinking about the functioning of a society. You stand with the potential of constructing a new collective that holds the potential of becoming even more meaningful while risking failure. How do you try something that has the quality, and perhaps even destiny, to fail?

The word “tentative” refers to something that is hesitant or not completely certain, a thing of experimental nature. Tentative is an experiment by ten performers engaging in a small-scale society with a culture of constantly shifting norms. These norms shape how the performers “should” act in order to remain a part of the group. However, like in society, it is impossible to stay within the norms. Deviations leak out at all moments and in different directions. This brings us – a collective – to a new point in time and space with negotiations of where to go from here.

Choreographers: Silas Da Silva Roller, Ellie Vermunt, and Anton Skaaning Thomsen

Dancers: Anna Schou, Aron Tweve, Ella Eidstad Pedersen, Hedda Stokland, Ine Halvorsen, Julie Louise Berg Bjelke, Lea Amneby Snickars, Ellie Vermunt, Silas Da Silva Roller, and Anton Skaaning Thomsen

Composer: Fremo

Costume designer: Ellie Vermunt

Photography: Marie Skaaning Thomsen

Video documentation: Paulus Frithiof Wybrandt // paulusfilm

Video editor: Ellie Vermunt

Thank you: Mette Skaaning and Mette Frobenius

Tentative is supported by Trafo (NO) and co-produced with Gnist Festival (DK).