RDF - Notes on Spitting

Notes on Spitting is an expanded reading based on a text by Dani Blanga Gubbay, exploring the relations between dance and choreography, sex and pornography. Blending theory and fiction, the text traces a 24-hour journey through the worlds of dance, moving between Susan Sontag’s novel The Volcano Lover and works by Maria Hassabi and Alex Baczyński-Jenkins. In the expanded reading, voice, sound and a saliva-inducing cocktail extend the text into a live encounter, exploring the possibility of thinking dance as a corroding gesture—like saliva spat onto a stain to dissolve it—capable of softening some categories of perception.
Daniel Blanga Gubbay is a writer and performing arts curator. He was part of the artistic direction of Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels (2018–2026). He has worked as an educator and independent curator of performance and public programmes, including for the performance programme of the 36th Bienal de São Paulo (2025). He holds a PhD from the University of Palermo and is among the founding members of Celador, a space for experimenting with language in Brussels, as well as a member of the artistic committee of Beirut Art Center. He writes across theory and fiction, publishing in various contexts, sometimes under the name Dani—a personal, night name—following a lineage of artists and writers who use a diminutive to signal intimacy, experimentation, and a shift in tone, their signature becoming a voice more than a label. Notes on Spitting will be published in early 2027.

Written and read by Dani Blanga Gubbay
Originally commissioned and published in Mousse Magazine (issues 91–94).
The expanded reading includes drawings by Alina Popa (1982–2019), references to Maria Hassabi, nora chipaumire and Alex Baczyński-Jenkins, sound created by Krzysztof Bagiński, and images from Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Querelle (1982).

The performance is part of the Reykjavík Dance Festival program. The festival program can be found at https://www.reykjavikdancefestival.com/