description

blow me tender is an upcoming choreographic and sonic solo by Ivana Balabanova, and the first work within tender futures, a long-term artistic and community-oriented project on acceleration, exhaustion, loneliness and the erosion of care.

The work looks at exhaustion as a collective and systemic condition instead of a personal failure. Moving between experiences in the Balkans and in Switzerland, between inherited cultures of endurance and the growing demands of optimisation and self-management, it treats tiredness as a political threshold: a moment in which the functional body begins to crack, and other forms of attention, refusal and relation might become possible.

At its centre is a cyborg sonic body. Through blowing, loops, groove, voice and technology, a single body appears functional, connected and estranged at once. Microphones, sensors and sound feedback translate breath, voice and movement into signals, making audible the effort that usually stays hidden behind a functioning presence. Rule-based scores, built as “if this, then that” systems, tie movement, breath and sound to one another, so that when one element shifts, the performer and the whole sonic system have to reorganise.

blow me tender is not looking for a more resilient body. It asks whether a third body can emerge from the encounter between performer, sound, technology, space and audience: a temporary field of relation in which attention, movement and meaning keep shifting.

The project

The research for blow me tender has begun through residencies at Tanzhaus Basel, within Brückerei, and at K3 | Tanzplan Hamburg as part of its summer residency. It grows out of street and contemporary movement practices and extends the sensor-based research begun in YUGO into sonic and posthuman ways of thinking.

A first showing from the research will take place on 12 November 2026 at 6 pm at Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen. The work will continue to develop from there, with further dates to be announced.

From there, the actual production starts its development through few potential collaborations with K3, Premio, Mixed Pickles, Rote Fabrik Zürich, Pool Raum für Kultur St Gallen, etc.