Set around a sculptural installation, Lemmings - A Rehearsal for a Revolution explores everyday strategies of resistance, focusing on the human body as a tool to challenge systems of oppression and structures of power.

When the human body is under constant surveillance and regulation, it becomes a site of oppression. Inevitably, small choices around one’s clothing, public appearance, or bodily gestures can become revolutionary acts of rebellion and the body assumes a central role in resistance and political efforts.

Inspired by the ongoing, female-led “Woman, Life, Freedom” revolution in Iran, as well as other global echoes of bodily resistance, Lemmings draws from both the raw physicality of public demonstrations, and the symbolic gestures of everyday defiance. The performers channel both the physical persistence of protesters and the haunting repetition of the 90s video game called Lemmings. In the 1990s classic, digital lemmings march en masse toward uncertain futures — and often toward mass destruction unless directed with care.

Are we passively following or actively shaping our own movement?

Like the game’s characters – and like real lemmings in nature, which migrate in vast groups across perilous terrains – Razavi’s piece explores the tension between collective movement and individual agency.

Drawing from lived experience, Lemmings marks Razavi’s first dance based performance and the second part of her latest body of work on the topic of strategies for resistance.