I love when you're watching me
It is transparent and fluid, allowing you to be seen and felt.
Dear Lovers, you know
appearing and disappearing is like coming and going, like being here and there, like ghosting yourself, like the holes in your body, like winding and waving, like dancing the past, present, and future, like you and me.
So, melting between these fantasies, I will dance for you.
I invite you to see me, imagine me, sense me, watch me, eroticize me, criticize me, love me, or hate me. Just be with me, and when it’s all over, leave me.Again and again. Like repetition. Like creating experience. Like a romance. Like water spilling from a mouth, like sweat dropping from a body, like liquids pouring out of the vagina. Like the pain of yesterday, already forgotten.
Again and again, I will appear and disappear, over and over again, just because of you. Like you. Like dancing the dance, like dancing it again and again, archiving dances in the body—as if having an affair with all the dances one has danced before.
Before disappearing, I will write you one last love letter and print it on your heart, window, and palm—so you never forget me
I dance for all of you,
And as you’re watching me, I will strip away every layer, standing bare before your gaze until darkness covers my skin, erasing my presence, and I dissolve into sea foam.Always yours,
Zhana
About the work
In I Love When You’re Watching Me, I dance solo in intimate connection with silence, music, dance, myself, and the audience, born out of a desire to open spaces of playful intimacy, where you can dwell and dissolve in ephemerality. I can easily appear and disappear, while at the same time always being here.
In I Love When You’re Watching Me, I celebrate being seen and felt in raw vulnerability. It invites failure and builds connections through sensual and delicate interactions.
In front of your gaze, with each breath, movement, and sound, I change and transition into something else. I become more visible, and sometimes I disappear invisibly.
Before disappearing with this dance, I allow myself to take up space, express myself freely, and create through movement. Shifting through personal experiences and dance archives, I leave and erase traces, touch senses, and invite you into the unknown.
Credits
Dance: Zhana Pencheva
Music: Tsvetan Momchilov
Light design and costumes: Ralitsa Toneva
Photo and video documentation: Natalya Sidorenko
Photo landscape event: Nikola Kaloyanov
This process was accompanied by dramaturgical, dance, and conceptual advice from Hana Erdman, Ofelia Jarl Ortega, Dario Barreto Damas, and Aleksandar Georgiev.
The texts accompanying the dance work were developed during Laressa Dickey’s writing course and were influenced by Laressa Dickey, Malina Suliman, Rakel Laupsa, and Sanna Atldax.
Duration: 50 minutes
Dates: 15 and 16 May, 18:00, Weld, Stockholm
This performance is part of my ongoing project Bodies in Pleasure, Bodies That Care, Dancing Bodies, initiated in the frame of my study. It explores sensuality, performative identities that the dancer carries within, and the erotic presence of the dancing body. The work examines relational dynamics with the environment, music, gazes, bodies, emotions, feelings, and the uncertainty of the unknown.
The project is supported by the Mobility Program of the Sofia Culture Program, Bulgaria.
More info in the printed program.
Bio
I am a freelance dancer working between Burgas, Sofia, Stockholm, and other international contexts. I hold BA and MA degrees in dance and choreography from New Bulgarian University and am currently graduating from the New Performance Practices MA program at Stockholm University of the Arts (SKH).
I create dance works that often explore themes of sensuality, eroticism, love, and the kinetic and relational spaces inhabited by the body. My choreographic projects are developed in close collaboration with music, sound, and light. Some of my works include the choreographic concerts Six Love Songs (2019), Dance baby, dance (2021), and Before disappearing (2024), as well as other pieces such as Glass of love and Garden.
In 2018, together with Aleksandar Georgiev and Dario Barreto Damas, I co-founded the international artistic team STEAM ROOM, working with collective authorship practices. We have presented works across numerous European cities. Since 2020, we have been developing a long-term initiative — Imaginative Choreographic Center (ICC) — which explores collective processes within the framework of an imaginative institution, fostering shared responsibility and critical engagement in dance and choreography.
In recent years, I have performed in both Bulgarian and international productions, including The Body as Reference for Revolution (United Cowboys), In C (Sasha Waltz & Guests), The Power of S (Aleksandar Georgiev), Hommage à Merce Cunningham (Paula Rosolen), Impossible Actions (2021, Yasen Vasilev), among others.
