I love when you´re watching me

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• I love when you´re watching me

I Love When You’re Watching Me

Dance work by Zhana Penkova Pencheva

“It is transparent and fluid, allowing you to be seen and felt”

I Love When You’re Watching Me is a result of the ongoing artistic project Bodies in Pleasure, Bodies That Care, Dancing Bodies. The project explores sensuality, the performative identities carried by the dancer, and the erotic presence of the dancing body. The work examines relational dynamics with the environment, music, gazes, bodies, emotions, feelings, and the uncertainty of the unknown.

You may experience the two as the same work or as entirely different pieces. This is not 

CREDITS

Dance: Zhana Pencheva

Music: Tsvetan Momchilov

Light & Stage Design: Ralitsa Toneva

Photo & Video Documentation: Gergely Ofner 

Co-Production by Garage Collective, ICC and Zhana Pencheva. 

With the partnership of Toplocemtrala, Sofia 

The project is financially supported by Stockholm University of the Arts, The Ministry of Culture of Bulgaria, Mobility Program of the National Culture Fund of Bulgaria, and ETUD Foundation.The process was accompanied by dramaturgical, dance, and conceptual advice from Hana Erdman, Ofelia Jarl Ortega, Dario Barreto Damas, and Aleksandar Georgiev.

“Dear Lovers, you know appearing and disappearing is like coming and going, like being here and there, like ghosting yourself, like the holes in your body, like winding and waving, like dancing the past, present, and future, like you and me.

So, melting between these fantasies, I will dance for you.

I invite you to see me, imagine me, sense me, watch me, eroticize me, criticize me, love me, or hate me. Just be with me, and when it’s all over, leave me.  Again and again. Like repetition. Like creating experience. Like a romance. Like water spilling from a mouth, like sweat dropping from a body, like liquids pouring out of the vagina. Like the pain of yesterday, already forgotten.

Again and again, I will appear and disappear, over and over again, just because of you. Like you. Like dancing the dance, like dancing it again and again, archiving dances in the body—as if having an affair with all the dances one has danced before.

Before disappearing, I will write you one last love letter and print it on your heart, window, and palm—so you never forget me 

I dance for all of you,

And as you’re watching me, I will strip away every layer, standing bare before your gaze until darkness covers my skin, erasing my presence, and I dissolve into sea foam.

Always yours,

Zhana”

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Zhana Pencheva is a freelance dancer working between Burgas, Sofia, Stockholm, and other international contexts. She holds a BA and an MA in Dance and Choreography from New Bulgarian University, and in 2025 she completes the master’s program “New Performative Practices” at Stockholm University of the Arts.

Her dance works often explore themes related to sensitivity, eroticism, love, relationships, and the kinetic spaces the body inhabits. She creates her performances in close collaboration with music, sound, light, space, and other bodies. Among her recent works are the choreographic concerts Six Love Songs (2019) and Dance baby, dance (2021), as well as the performances Glass of love and Garden. Her latest solo work is I Love When You’re Watching Me.

In 2018, together with Aleksandar Georgiev and Dario Barreto Damas, she co-founded the international artistic team STEAM ROOM, which works with practices of collective authorship. They have presented their productions in numerous European cities. Since 2020, they have been developing the long-term initiative Imaginative Choreographic Center (ICC) — a projec institution that explores collective processes and shared responsibility and critical engagement in the field of dance and choreography.

In recent years, Zhana has performed in Bulgarian and international productions, including PASSING (Israel Aloni), The Body as Reference for Revolution (United Cowboys), In C (Sasha Waltz & Guests), The Power of S (Aleksandar Georgiev), Hommage à Merce Cunningham (Paula Rosolen), Impossible Actions (2021, Yasen Vasilev), among others.