Is art “a mirror to hold up to society or a hammer with which to shape it”? Even if once upon a time it was indeed a hammer, “history repeats itself, the first as tragedy, then as farce”. In the course of its repetitions it was once claimed that “revolution wouldn't be televised”; then it was televised; and then we open the recurrent question: Can revolution be performed? Our concern is how to situate performance as art form and performance maker as artist in the continuum between “yes” and “no”. Nowadays one might really think: “If we cut the budget for art and culture, then what would we be fighting for?” Still, if “there were thousands of workers behind ‘The Builders of Bratsk’” and only dark sky behind the group Chto delat? (What is to be done?), we need to ask again: Who stands behind us?

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Revolution won’t be performed is a public event, which physically and conceptually takes place in the context of performing arts. The project started with research on the work of the communist choreographer—worker Jean (Hans) Weidt and his troupe Die Rote Tänzer and ended in a critical and ironic historical journey through the recent revolutions in European society, examining the role of dance and performance in those liminal moments. The revolution is understood here as a point of intersection between work (labor, production) and war (violent, often armed conflict), which we proclaim to be two prehistoric roots of dance as art. Questioning the possibility to perform a revolution, dance constantly plays around it, yet begins to stutter and steps back, out, down, or aside when it reaches its revolutionary peak.