ONE DANCE

Universal Tongue by Anouk Kruithof
Art Paper Editions
May 2021
Selected by TANK

The “universal tongue” of the book’s title is the act of dancing, which artist Anouk Kruithof represents as performed by people, mascots and even the giant inflatable tube men you see outside car dealerships. Kruithof’s interest in online dancing videos blossomed into a collaborative research project involving 50 people, who helped to source nearly 9,000 videos from across the internet. These were edited down to an eight-channel installation of four hours each, representing both the vast array of dancing styles that proliferate across visual media and their singular expression of personality, cultural identity and joy. The book collects these images and forms a thesaurus of dance styles, creating a sense of the universal human language at the heart of dance, in which everyone is born fluent.