Based in London, Melanie Manchot is a celebrated visual artist whose performance-based, participatory practice spans photography, film, video and immersive installation. Her work explores personal and collective identities, often responding to specific locations and the increasing curtailment of public space. 

The RWA is pleased to present the premiere of Manchot’s new work, Night Moves (2026),
 supported by the RWA Commissioning Circle and funding from Art Fund. The work premieres as part of our summer exhibition, Dance Out. 

We caught up with Melanie to discuss the creative process behind Night Moves, the role of collaboration in her practice, and dance as a form of resistance. 

In Night Moves, Bristol-based dancers perform in car parks, beneath bridges and inside empty buildings — each location becoming an individual stage. Why is dance such an important medium in your work? 

For over 20 years, I have been making video works that look at various forms of dance and choreography as ways of marking space, drawing lines with gestures and speaking embodied languages. Across the work, I am investigating how we produce, maintain and consolidate ideas about our individual and collective identities — an often complex and multiple sense of self. Dancing is inherent to human beings, both in terms of the rhythms of our physical existence and in our sociality. 

How do you collaborate with the people who become subjects in your work? 

Forms of participation, collaboration and co-authorship permeate everything I do. I have always formed close exchanges with the people in my work, and I am now also extending this thinking to more-than-human beings. In all the dance works, the participants author their contributions: they decide how to dance, what to dance, what music to use and what they wear, and it is precisely through their creative collaboration that these works come alive. Each dancer is the expert on the shapes and lines of their gestures, and the work lives through reciprocal exchanges and joint decisions. 

How do you see dance and movement functioning as forms of language, resistance, or collective expression? 

Most cultures express themselves through forms of dance — often this originates in rituals and might serve social functions. So, while specific gestures are a reflection of the cultures they originate from, they often resonate across forms of dance. Certain shapes, such as circles, are embedded in many dance cultures and choreographic notations. Dancers twirl in salsa, waltz, folk, breakdance, hip-hop… 

Collective dancing connects us deeply to ourselves and our sense of belonging. Dancing with strangers — in clubs, festivals, fields, woods or shopping centres — is a very powerful mode of social exchange. With the increasing demise of club culture, I feel dancing in public is a political statement. Reclaiming public space for the public, connecting people in joint movement… simple but full of impact and potential for resistance and protest. One of my dance video works is called “Dancing is the Best Revenge”, after a brilliant music track by the dance-punk band !!! (Chk Chk Chk). 

Night Moves feels like a continuation of your Dance All Night series. How has the evolution of social media influenced the way you approach movement, visibility and participation in your work? 

In Night Moves, I have embraced the pervasive influence of social media on how we consume dance videos. Many of us watch dance on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, and I decided to conduct all my research into Bristol dancers through those channels. But ultimately, the dancers I contacted still self-selected, as in all my other dance works before. 

You can hear more from Melanie and Art Fund's Robert Dingle in an 'Evening with...' on 15 July 2026. Click here to book tickets.

Dance Out is at the RWA until 9 Aug