In the multimedia performance Anatomorphoses (20-23 June 24, DOCK 11 EDEN) Penelope Wehrli and herteam have future people and fleeting nebulous entities dance – in the hope of changing our self-awareness and perception of the world.Continue reading “Excerpts from an Encyclopedia of the Future “
Johanna Ackva
Those Who Never Take Root. A Performative Archive of the Queer Asian Diaspora
For Floating Roots (9 – 12 May 2024, Tanzfabrik, revival), Inky Lee interviewed 17 1.5 and 2nd generation Asian and queer immigrants. Six of them are together on stage with two Deaf performers.
I am looking at a stage that is never still. There is a constant coming and going. Someone is always running in a circle, with thumping steps. Someone else is moving, slowly creeping, also in a circle, in the opposite direction. Or from one corner to another. Or around another person, without losing sight of them. I look left, then right, then left again. I try to grasp what is happening, what seems like soberly performed movements that appear aimless. Endless light changes immerse everything in blue, then pink, then yellow, blue, pink, yellow, etc.
The restlessness on stage washes over me like a wave. Along with a collage of accounts of migration, discrimination, loneliness and the feeling of neither belonging to the “old” nor the “new homeland”, which are the soundtrack of the piece, the performance makes me feel increasingly fatigued. And yet, this state of exhaustion probably does not even come close to how the gruelling process of years of fighting for asylum or the constant confrontation with sometimes crude and at other times subtle racist statements actually feels. I am spared all that as a white woman in Germany. Tonight, I am invited to witness the stories of those who are not able to take root anywhere and perhaps understand a bit of their rootlessness and restlessness.
![](https://tanzschreiber.de/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/FloatingRoots_Inky-Lee_byCerenSaner_2-1-1024x530.png)
©Ceren Saner
It touches on, for example, how parents send their eight week old child to Shanghai with its grandmother so they can work in Germany. Because there is no time to take care of a child. Or a teenager who stands in front of a mirror kneading its face in the hopes of achieving a smaller nose and larger eyes. Inky Lee’s performers, who are the source of some of these stories, are on stage for the first time and only for this piece. Bound by a neon yellow rope, they move towards one another in shifting constellations. Connections are made, stretched to their limits, and cut off. Groups arise and peter out. For long stretches of the piece, I find it hard to connect what they are doing with what I am hearing. But then there are also those moments during which the precarious constellations of bodies, like a family constellation, correlate with the narratives blaring over the loudspeaker or enter into a productive, inharmonious relationship. Moments which I would have liked to see more of.
Sometimes the voices from the tape falter and burst into tears. One of the two Deaf performers, who are able to express with their faces and expressive gestures that which cannot be put into words, catches my attention. It now becomes clear to me that the archive of experiences of queer people from the Asian diaspora goes far beyond what can be shared today. To that end, Floating Roots is perhaps not a conclusion, but rather the beginning of a process.
English translation by Melissa Maldonado
Floating Roots by Inky Lee was performed at Tanzfabrik Berlin from 9 to 12 May 2024.
Rise of the Spoons Against the System. OR: Kudos! Here’s How Intersectional Inclusion Can Work in Theater
The stand-up comedy Baby I’m Sick Tonight will make you laugh and cry. Ahead of the premiere (April 25, 2024, Sophiensaele), I spoke with the choreographer Olivia Hyunsin Kim about chronic illness and the shortcomings when it comes to dealing with it.Continue reading “Rise of the Spoons Against the System. OR: Kudos! Here’s How Intersectional Inclusion Can Work in Theater”
“I gave Birth to a Hawk”. Or: On Neverending Labor Pains
Continue reading ““I gave Birth to a Hawk”. Or: On Neverending Labor Pains”With New Report On Giving Birth (6 + 7 March 2024, HAU Hebbel am Ufer (HAU2)), Chinese choreographer and dancer Wen Hui builds on her piece Report On Giving Birth presented 20 years ago. Together with three dancers, she takes stock: what has changed for childbearing bodies since then? What has not?
Between two stools
The PURPLE – International Dance Festival for Young Audiences (20th – 28th January) opened on Saturday, 20th January, 2024 with Chotto Desh, a moving solo about the biography of dancer and choreographer Akram Khan.
Continue reading “Between two stools”
Boy, say something!
In Solo for Boy, which premiered at Dock11 on 11.1.2024, choreographer Sasha Amaya in dialogue with dancer Félix Deepen, works her way through Western representations of male beauty in art, fashion and pop culture.
Continue reading “Boy, say something!”
Only Guests on Earth
The interdisciplinary evening Terrestrial Transit asks how we can embrace the earthly and finite transition of being as a way of life. With five performances at DOCK11 until December 9, 2023, the company Cranky Bodies concludes a nomadic project that began in Berlin and led via Brandenburg and the border town of Szczecin to the Baltic Sea.
Continue reading “Only Guests on Earth”
Home Match of Monstrosities
Continue reading “Home Match of Monstrosities”The series Fold (Tanzfabrik) ends the year with works concerned with ghosts and demons. In The Multiplicity of the Other shown from the 30.11 until 2.12.2023, Ixchel Mendoza Hernández dwells on the Other as a ghostly presence in one’s own body.