In German with English surtitles

The story isn’t over; the story goes on. My daughter! Happiness and madness go on. My mother is white, yours a Black woman. I grew up in the western half, you in a cosmopolitan city. Do you think the story is over? Berlin is so big, so free, so provincially violent.

Half the city was the cosmos of my childhood; with a roast chicken trip to the other galaxy. Are privileges short-lived? Do they open horizons or blind us? Who owns the whole city? Who is it made for? For you, for us? Black Berliner. I would like you to be spared a few experiences. But how?

Auf meinen Schultern (On my shoulders) is a solo performance by the dancer and choreographer Raphael Moussa Hillebrand, his first at Ballhaus Naunynstraße. Based on his experience of growing up in Berlin in the 1980s and 90s, he attempts to give shape to his lived experience so that the next generation and his own child can connect to it – a danced, break-danced, spoken, and performed passing on musically accompanied by the cellist Eurico Ferreira Mathias.

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Press comments on the honor at the German Dance Award:

Raphael Moussa Hillebrand has been honored for his outstanding achievements in contemporary dance as part of the German Dance Award 2020. A year earlier, Raphael Moussa Hillebrand’s solo Auf meinen Schultern (On My Shoulders ) was released in collaboration with Ballhaus Naunynstraße. The German Dance Award jury’s citation states:

„We honour Raphael Hillebrand because, for all his charm and openness, he is an artist through and through, who recognizes in the body a motor that can only overcome the social imbalance in our society through courage.“