They have danced through the country and crossed oceans and seas, each move a recollection of their past.

Now today in the north east of Scotland, seven dancers will make memories few who witness their performance will ever forget.

A 12-hour “marathon of dance and memory” is being staged in Findhorn, Moray, between the hours of midday and midnight in the first ever performance of its kind.

Wallflower is a production from Manchester-based performance company Quarantine, which sees dancers share their personal recollections of music, fashion, culture, politics and love, from their own life experiences through the form of dance, whether dancing alone in a nightclub, dancing at the Paris Opera Ballet or dancing with a dog across a beach.

First staged in Wales four years ago, the production, which features a live DJ, has toured to Canada, the Netherlands, Sweden, Ireland and England in 90- minute and five-hour forms.

Today’s half-day debut in Scotland is the longest version of the show ever mounted, with amateur and professional performers dancing for 12 continuous hours.

So far the production, which features a stark set comprising just a single chair and a disco ball, has seen almost 3,500 dances “remembered” by dancers, each one archived by the award-winning theatre company.

The production was brought to the north of Scotland by Karl Jay-Lewin, creative director of Findhorn-based performance organisation Dance North, after he saw a previous event.

He said: “It’s basically a number of dancers literally remembering every dance they’ve ever danced. It’s a live remembering of dancing, from all the experiences of anything that could constitute dance, whether they be dances on a stage or in the kitchen. It’s quite an undertaking, it’s  unique. 

“Some dancers could be dancing for five hours so it’s a real challenge. And some of their dance stories are actually quite intimate and revealing.”

Ahead of the event, residents of the Moray village have been asked to create a picture of their own personal dance history, sharing memories to be displayed as part of an online archive of remembered dance and on display in the village’s Universal Hall where today’s marathon is being held.

Wallflower director Richard Gregory said: “Wallflower is way of using dance as a means of creating self portraits, a way of trying to remember who we are, and sharing that memory with other people. People find it emotionally moving without even being able to identify exactly why –they’re flooded with their own memories of dancing. Right from the very first time we did a five-hour version, we’ve found that something significantly shifted.”