Hot Flash Dance Clash

Part of the BLOODY BEAUTIFUL programme by affect lab.

This event took place on June 3 2025, at Effenaar, Eindhoven.

With Hot Flash Dance Clash (try saying that fast ten times), we want to highlight the physical experiences of people with cycles and celebrate them in a way that allows them to shape their own narrative — through dancing! Inspired by data tracking of menstruating and menopausal bodies, we’ve been hacking temperature sensors with our extraordinary collaborators.
Feminist interaction designer Patsy Nagtzaam has been creating cyborg-style heat-sensor wearables that sync with an app and data collector developed by creative coder Frank Bosma. These sensors will be worn during the dance prototyping session, letting participants track their own (and collective) body temperature in real time. To really set the vibe, DJ and designer Guanyan Wu will be lighting the dance floor on fire.

On 3 June 2025, it was time to do our first “play test”! We invited an energetic group of test participants to Effenaar, who got the heat-sensing wearable attached to their bodies and got on the floor to get their temperature rising. Everyone got sweaty in their round of the dance battle! When a “hot flash” (a peak temperature) was reached, a smoke machine would shoot out steamy smoke. After the session, we gathered for a reflection on the participants' experience of the gameplay. It was incredibly valuable to see how the technology worked in practice. Thanks to all our test-dancers for useful feedback.

The launch of the party will be on 2 October at the opening of the Bloody Beautiful Festival. We hope to see new and familiar faces on the dance floor!

Some extra background for our research: 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.

Hot Flash Dance Clash is a 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?