Hot Flash Dance Clash

Part of the BLOODY BEAUTIFUL movement.

Hot Flash Dance Clash highlights the physical experiences of people with cycles and celebrate them in a way that allows them to shape their own narrative - through dance. For the past year we’ve been hacking the systems and sensors that track data of menstruating and menopausal bodies. Then we designed a dance competition around our hacking, inspired by hip hop and breakdancing battles.

affect lab’s creative director Klasien van de Zandschulp has been working with feminist interaction designer Patsy Nagtzaam who created cyborg-style heat-sensor wearables that sync with a data collector developed by creative coder Frank Bosma. These sensors are worn during the dance competition, collecting body temperature data in real time and then revealed to the crowd. To really set the vibe, DJ and designer Guanyan Wu lights up the dance floor.

On 3 June 2025, we held our first prototyping session. We invited an energetic group of test participants to iconic music venue De Effenaar. Participants wore heat-sensing wearables in a dance battle with ever rising body heat. After the session, we gathered for a reflection on the participants' experience of the gameplay. The launch of the this work will be on 2 October at the opening night of the Bloody Beautiful Festival at music venue Doka in Amsterdam. We hope to see new and familiar faces on the dance floor.

Background

Hot Flash Dance Clash is a playful quantified and embodied experience of temperature changes. How does embodied data move between the individual and the collective? And how does this intimate data connect or disrupt the connection we have with our bodies?

Smart technology is playing a growing role in how we manage our health - for example, by using heat sensors to track menstrual cycles and hot flashes. We trust these apps with our (very intimate) data and follow the algorithms that tell us which symptoms we’re likely to experience on any given day. But many cycle-tracking apps are designed with a hetero- and cis-normative lens, ignoring the diverse needs of different bodies. And most free apps don’t ensure the data privacy of their users, which is especially concerning in a time when reproductive rights are under serious threat.