Loup Abramovici: Warming Up

The work of the dancer always remains invisible to the eyes of the audience. What we see is only perfection, because the dancer is not working on stage but dancing. The dancer’s task is to erase any trace of work, any trace of effort. Dancers must transcend themselves so that the body’s involvement in its own reproduction is no longer visible. Only then can the real difference between art and life be established.

The dancer is at once a medium and a work of art, using only the body: doing is not polluting. It leaves no trace. It does not accumulate anything. The dancer is always repeating and improving, not throwing anything away. The dancer is compact and healthy, rejoicing when a crumb of freedom is located in impossible constraints. Dancers do not need gas but warm themselves. They are flexible, reactive, in constant readiness. The dancer is equipped with everything to survive the various planetary crises.
The dancer! Our future!

#warming up for disaster, warming up for the lion's leap into the future, warming up in times of crisis, warming up as recovery, warming up for nothing, warming up for a healthy mind in a healthy body, warming up for something that is yet to come, warming up for a performance you will never live to see, warming up for the best performance in the world, warming up for all the invisible workers, warming up in solidarity....


Let’s Work! (2022–2023) deals with the problem of work. It invites us, through various artistic situations set in specific environments, to reflect on the meaning and value of work, the ways in which we experience work in everyday life, and how art is at work. In the first chapter (2022), artworks are contextualized in locations that play a constructive role in society in terms of the formulation of labor policies, and more specifically the formulation of strategies in the field of cultural labor, in public services that respond to labor problems, in institutions that educate the upcoming workforce, and in spaces that play a role in contemporary art practices. The spatial and temporal positioning of works for (re)viewing by both institutional staff and invited and casual visitors aims to widen the field of visibility of the artwork and its reception. In the second chapter (2023), the artworks will be presented in their entirety in exhibition and performance formats.