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is an upcoming solo-exhibition, dance performance and theatrical encounter by Reuben Brown at PS3 Project Space; Belfast in November 2025. DANSTOPIA! is generously supported by White Claw® Hard Seltzer Ireland.DANSTOPIA! proposes a hypothetical framework through which to understand nightlife as both a material and symbolic infrastructure. It examines how architectural, social and affective structures intersect in the production of identity, shared ritual and belonging, and how these structures shift to reveal broader dynamics of power embedded in contemporary culture.
Central to DANSTOPIA! is the notion of the threshold, understood not as a barrier but as a site where experience is shaped by delay and deferral, functioning as a mechanism of regulation and anticipation. In this frame, nightlife is understood as a network of practices and conventions that regulate who is seen, who is admitted and who belongs, whilst also giving rise to fleeting instances of intimacy, collectivity and exclusion. The work treats anticipation as a structuring condition, showing how exclusion generates its own forms of intensity and knowing. It suggests that cultural spaces are defined as much by what holds us outside, through moments of hesitation and withholding, as by what draws us in.