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In the Dark, I Dance

Project

Visual Arts

In the Dark, I Dance is a GTA Contest finalist project by Michelle Ronaly Kuruwitaarachchi, a student at RUFA – Rome University of Fine Arts, which stems from an intimate and recurring gesture: dancing alone in the dark as a form of emotional release, a private ritual that has accompanied her since childhood.

In silence, movement becomes memory: a threshold to imaginary places that become more real than the outside world. To give form to this practice, the artist began to etch old vinyl records, whose circular structure recalls the cyclical nature of dance. Inked and pressed at the press, the records generate two series of prints: one evolving from deep black to layers of color, the other built on the overlapping of multiple records, creating rhythm and variation.

Each impression captures a transformation, a repetition, a release.
From these prints come stop-motion animations, inspired by early optical devices: fixed marks that dissolve into circular movements, evoking the rhythm of the body. Even vinyls retain a voice of their own – scratched and played live, their jumps and distortions become an intimate and imperfect soundscape.

” In the Dark, I Dance ” thus lives in the encounter of print, movement and sound: a tribute to the quieter part of the artist, and a reminder that even the smallest rituals can hold extraordinary meaning.

All the finalist works from the international “Normal is Extraordinary” contest will be on display Dec. 5-8 at the MAXXI Museum in Rome.

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Normal is extraordinary

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In the Dark, I Dance