About the work

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Originally commissioned by and produced in collaboration with Mossutställningar and The Polish Institute of Stockholm.

The Dinner Club is a fully interactive performance shaped as an evening class. Over six practical workshops, participants learn how to enjoy themselves at a dinner party with strangers. Good manners and social etiquette are taught, as well as practical tips on mastering weddings, dinner parties and openings. Exercises might include ‘Basic social dancing’, ‘The A to Z of Mingling’, or ‘Elementary Table Manners’. A three-course dinner then doubles as the exam for the session, and every visitor that passes receives a personalised diploma.

The Dinner Club carves into “good manners”. Men are treated as men – and they treat women as women.

As inequality between the sexes is delicately served up, embarrassment and confusion become the hardest mouthfuls to swallow. The Dinner Club encourages us to reflect on our own behaviour, and to digest the shame it may have caused.