Next performance: Saman dance. The idea began with two artworks that already felt theatrical in completely different ways. Benjamin Pollock’s Characters and Scenes, from Jack and the Giant Killer presents its figures almost like a cast waiting to be placed onstage, while Antonio Joli’s Capriccio with St. Paul’s and Old London Bridge offers a vast architectural setting that already resembles an elaborate theater set. I imagined what would happen if the characters stepped out of their printed roles, entered Joli’s grand painted space, and stopped performing as individuals. Saman became the bridge between them: a performance built on closeness, collective rhythm, and the transformation of many bodies into one coordinated visual unit. The characters are reorganized into a close seated formation and animated through movements inspired by Saman from Aceh: synchronized clapping, rhythmic pats to the thighs and chest, repeated forward bows, sharp upright recoveries, and coordinated left and right torso sways that accelerate together as the performance develops. These movements deliberately replace the individual poses of the toy-theater characters with a shared rhythm, making the contrast itself part of the work: eccentric characters from a British theatrical print suddenly moving with discipline and unity inside an eighteenth century architectural fantasy. Rather than claiming to reproduce traditional Saman literally, I use its distinctive synchronized movement and communal energy as the choreographic language that allows two unrelated historical artworks to become one new performance. Sources: Capriccio with St. Paul’s and Old London Bridge — Antonio Joli · Characters and Scenes, from Jack and the Giant Killer, Plate 1 for a Toy Theater — Benjamin Pollock Flora Link: https://app.flora.ai/view/js7as2y547y3tr666q2b49vadx8e0ewz Note: The final choreography is still an approximation rather than a fully accurate Saman performance. Due to current generation limitations, and because the intended motion-reference video was repeatedly blocked by Seedance 2.5, the dance had to be reconstructed through text-based movement direction instead. The result should therefore be read as a Saman inspired reinterpretation rather than a faithful reproduction of the traditional choreography.