“…blasted conventions around dance, performance and gender in a stunning aural and sensory assault.
At times menacing, at times tender and funny, while also redolent with risk, suspense, danger and total sexiness, in this astonishing gesamtkunstwerk, the boundary-busting essence of Marina Abramović’s pioneering early performance work lives on”
- Louisa Buck, The Art Newspaper.
Impact Driver, an absolutely unique, raw, and extraordinary sensory performance explosion –unlike anything you’ve seen before.
Let live welding, flying sparks, psychedelic guitar soundscapes, smoke, and bodily sensuality blast your senses.
This is more than a performance – it’s a spectacle!
Impact Driver by UK artist and performance maker Eve Statinton is interested in methodologies for constructing thriller-like suspense. How suspense can be sustained as the main event, in the absence of a climax or traditional resolution.
Borrowing the logic from a welding workshop, Stainton foregrounds activities that require live negotiation and decision making; making visible how scenes and objects take their shape, and continue to move through meanings. Atmospheres, garments, feelings and materials, generative and in tension.
Working with time-based notions of being ‘caught in the act’ and ‘on tenterhooks’, Stainton explores how suspense as a rumbling undercurrent has the potential to punctuate lesbian and trans-masc identities. Haunting, time stretching, absurdist.
‘Welding is potent for me in so many ways- its strong alchemical presence, its extreme theatricality, its capacity for danger/excitement/ drama/power/thrill, its sensuality, its brashness.’
– Eve Stainton
Featuring an ensemble from different creative backgrounds who don’t usually work in the field of dance, this research continues Stainton’s work in celebrating the gender non-conforming lesbian and trans-masc experience, of which there are many, and what foregrounding these identities means to the white western Contemporary Dance canon.
Impact Driver is featuring live welding, movement, and live sound scored by Leisha Thomas and Mica Levi. Performed by Tink Flaherty, Karima Francis, Wet Mess, Romeo Roxman Gatt, Charlotte Valentine and Eve Stainton.
Concept and Choreography
Eve Stainton
Performance Eve Stainton, Tink Flaherty, Karima Francis, Wet Mess, Romeo Roxman Gatt, Charlotte Valentine
Producer Michael Kitchin
Set Design and Fabrication
H S Design Studios
Production Manager Helen Mugridge
Associate Production Manager Ruby Sevink Johnston
Welding Manager Martha McGuinn
Lighting Designer Charlie Hope
Costume Designer Ella Boucht
Costume Assistant Oline Bronee
Dramaturgical Support
Artist Care Person
Liz Rosenfeld
Jamila Johnson-Small
Seyi Adelekun
PR Binita Walia
Access Dramaturg Kat Hawkins
Artist Support El Perry
Choreographic Support
Florence Peake
3D Typography Bora AKA Pauline Canavesio
Devised in collaboration with original cast
Tink Flaherty, Mica Levi, Imani Mason Jordan, Romeo Roxman Gatt, Leisha Thomas
Co-commissioned by Sadler’s Wells, Institute of Contemporary Arts, Take Me Somewhere, Wysing Arts Centre and Dansehallerne.
Supported by Bergen Kunsthall and Wainsgate. Supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England. With thanks to Phyllida Barlow Studio for steel donation. This project is generously supported by Kamila Serkebaeva and FABRIC International.
Presentation at Dansehallerne supported by The Danish Art Council.
Eve Stainton is an artist and choreographer born in Manchester and living in London, UK. They create multi-disciplinary performances that involve movement practices, welded steel/ live welding, digital collage, and other invisible forces like drama and suspense. Their research is rooted in community, interested in how differently marginalised people experience and come into relationship with power structures and societal conventions. Often working with codes or tropes of gender, class and threat, their work stages clunky physical negotiations and reveals ‘behind the scenes’ mechanisms of working together to show a kind of reality that isn’t seamless.
In 2023 Eve was nominated for the Premio Cunha e Silva Art Prize at Galeria Municipal do Porto (PT). Features include The Wire mag, PW Magazine, The Art Newspaper, Metal, AQNB, FACT Mag, Dazed Beauty, Twin Magazine, Art in America, This is Tomorrow.
Work for other artists include Anthea Hamilton, Tai Shani, Last Yearz Interesting Negro, Sonia Boyce, Malik Nashad Sharpe, Holly Blakey, Goldfrapp, Compagnie ECO international tour, Vivienne Westwood, Claire Barrow, Art School, Molly Goddard, walking for London/Shanghai/ Paris Fashion Weeks.
www.evestainton.com
Dates and times
26.9.2025, 20:00
27.9.2025, 17:00
Duration and stage
60 minutes in Hallen
Dansehallerne’s address
Franciska Clausens Plads 27, 1799 Copenhagen V.
Accessibility
The venue is wheelchair accessible, with an elevator providing access to the stages. All restrooms are genderneutral, and an accessible toilet for wheelchair users is available.
Age limit
14+ (partial nudity)
Content warnings
• This performance contains partial nudity, haze, eye level strobe, moments of black out, loud live sound and live welding.
• Welding creates a smell that can be detected in the space.
• Welding curtains are used during the performance, which allow you to safely watch the welding with no additional eye protection.
• A limited number of ear defenders will be available; if you have your own, please bring them.
• This performance includes very loud noises. The music, industrial sounds layered with guitars is loud and interspersed with welding sounds and metals scraping.
Dansehallerne is a national center for dance and choreography. Our focus lies in presenting and co-producing Danish and international productions for all ages. We are a gathering point for passionate dance audiences and professionals. From our center, we communicate professional knowledge of the art of dance, and we drive discussions about all aspects of the art of dance, at an intermediate level and in-depth.
Being a national center, as well as a gathering point for the local and international communities, we continuously work to ensure the best possible settings for artistic production and for the audience’s encounter with the art of dance. Every year, people from all around the country can experience the best that dance has to offer. And for several hundred artists, Dansehallerne is the year-round base and interface for professional activities within the field of dance.
