the intimacy of collision by Lebanese choreographer Dominique Tegho celebrated its premiere during the 30th anniversary of Tanztage Berlin (8 to 24 January 2026) at the Sophiensæle. A review of the second performance on 18 January 2026.
As always at Tanztage Berlin – and certainly worth mentioning – the seats are full and the audience is palpably cheerful and full of anticipation. It is only once I’ve found a seat in the third row of the Hochzeitssaal and have been watching as Dominique Tegho and Anthony Nakhlé pace on and off the stage that I realize this is not the first piece of Tegho’s I’ve written about. In 2020, Tegho performed a solo at the Series NAH DRAN (ada Studio), perhaps at or before the start of her choreography studies at HZT Berlin. Similar to the piece I’m watching today, Tegho worked with physical exertion in her 2020 solo, with a slow buildup of intensity – and with fruit. Back then, she handed out mandarins at the end of the piece in ada Studio. This time the fruit only appears in a virtual scene. A video still shows the stereotypical fantasy of a belly dancer in a harem. A figure stumbles into the image with a silver tray laden with fruit. The figure (performer Hassandra) tears open oranges with both hands, devours fleshy bits, sucks out the juices, and throws the rest on the expensive “Oriental” carpet.
There are things and topics, whether, as in this case, artistic material or not, that take time to process. Things one has to ruminate on, so to speak, which are perhaps indigestible. Orientalism, the history of the exoticized gaze, which is inseparable from the colonial relationship between Caucasian Europe, the so-called western world, and the countries of the Arbic world, can be viewed as a topic that resists digestion. How could we begin to digest what even now still remains deeply intertwined with racist structures and power relationships. This is not to say that there is no movement. In Tegho’s piece, the aforementioned figure leaves the harem and steps into the theater. Her tray is piled high with rotting banana peels and orange zests, the organic waste ultimately landing in a high arc on the marley. The problem isn’t eliminated. The gaze cannot return to a state of innocence. But – the work seems to suggest – we can refuse to continue chewing on the rotten remnants of history and instead turn them into a causa publica.
After expending so many words on the fruit, I only have a few left over to say: I believe I saw Salome in the first 20 to 30 minutes of the piece. Saw is not quite right. I encountered her in myself. She swayed with my hips, sent waves through my spine, and awakened my desire to dance. The same seems to have happened to the person sitting next to me. What does it all mean? Perhaps it is a productive role reversal as we – the person next to me and I – are structurally more akin to the Caucasian heirs of Salome’s inventors and those who devoured Salome with their gaze. Either way, this piece had a lot to offer: to reflect on, understand, or perhaps first digest.
