Dansbana!

Founded by Anna Fridolin, Anna Pang, and Teres Selberg in Stockholm, 2015

Highlighting the value of dance as a tool of personal and collective transformation, Dansbana!’s installation features custom architectural forms and sculptural Bluetooth speakers that can support live performances and improvised engagement.

Since 2015, this Swedish architectural collaborative has designed public, Bluetooth-powered, open-access dance floors through a community-driven research process. The name Dansbana! comes from a traditional Swedish term for a public dancing space. Initially developed by the all-female architecture trio as a response to a lack of public recreation spaces for young girls and women in and around Stockholm, each Dansbana! dance floor—including both permanent and temporary sites in Stockholm and Istanbul—is conceived together with local participants and site-responsive in its approach.

The Akron dance floor’s program and design has been developed through a series of workshops in Fall/Winter 2021–22 with dancers from area community and cultural organizations. The goal was to create an ongoing dialogue around movement, recreation, and music—an architecture of joy and collective healing with effects that can resonate beyond the Triennial.

The construction of Dansbana!'s dance floor in Akron was delayed due to protests and shutdowns in response to the shooting of Jayland Walker on June 27, 2022, by Akron police. At the time of publication, the installation was acoustically functional but still incomplete.

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Dansbana!, Dansbana! Akron, 2022, Commissioned by FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art, with support from The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, GAR Foundation and Richard and Alita Rogers and in partnership with the City of Akron

Update 9/18/22: Essential components of the dance floor have been damaged and the site is no longer operable