Residency week 22 / 2026

The project How Do Anarchists Dance? led by dance makers Peter Mills and Benjamin Pohlig explores the intersection of anarchist philosophy and dance. Inspired by the famous slogan “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution” credited to Emma Goldman, the project asks how and if dance can critique power structures and embody autonomy and equality. Anarchism challenges all forms of domination and instead advocates for self-organised, egalitarian societies. The project investigates how dance can reflect these ideals and questions who or what “rules” dance and whether it can exist beyond governance, control, or established forms like choreography and improvisation.

Both artists identify with socialist traditions and seek to understand how their political beliefs influence their dance-making. They aim to develop a practice that resists command, origins, and ideals like beauty or meaning. The daily practice will have no predetermined purpose and will unfold relationally, experimenting with movement free from pre-established principles.

Informed by anarchist and related philosophical texts, as well as the history of dance, Peter and Benjamin will explore how anarchic ideas have shaped art and continue to do so. Two one-week residencies in Norway at Dansit and Sweden at Milvus Artistic Research Center (MARC) serve as laboratories for study and practice. The residencies will culminate in public sharings, either a small performance, studio sharing or workshop experiments to explore how this evolving dance practice can be shared and experienced by others.

Studio sharing Friday May 29th – from 12pm
Benjamin and PETER invites to an open studio sharing of the project at DansiT / Svartlamon on Friday, May 29th, from 12pm. Please let producer Betty know if you are planning to attend – email: betty@dansit.no / phone: +47 924 35 225.

DansiT / Svartlamon is fully accessible, with accessible parking available outside.

About the artists

Peter Mills, operating as PETER, is a choreographer and researcher whose work actively dismantles power structures within dance to forge ethical, autonomous practices. Drawing on their background as an Assistant Professor of Choreography at Stockholm University of the Arts, PETER engineers spaces of direct democracy and radical intervention. Their practice; spanning immersive national tours like O with Riksteatern, public activist disruptions such as Make Art Not War, and the open-source audio archive PETER, dance with… resists governable forms. By staging fragile, non-hierarchical styles of being-together, PETER’s work invites participants to expect difference and embody egalitarian relations. 
www.stillpeter.com

Benjamin Pohlig is a choreographer, dancer and researcher originally from Berlin. In his choreographic work, he explores the theatre as agora, a place in which social and political behaviours are not only practised, but are also experienced physically. This concept appears across his works, including the participatory solo “dance yourself clean”, and his collaborations “5 seasons” and “A Farewell to Flesh”. As a dancer, he has worked with amongst others Martin Nachbar and Isabelle Schad. From 2019 to 2022 was he an ensemble member of Cullberg. He is currently a PhD fellow at the dance academy of KhiO in Oslo where investigates the relationship between protest, dance and choreography.
https://khio.no/en/staff/benjamin-pohlig