17, 18 & 20 June 2016, 8 PM / 19 June 2016, 7 PM

How can we talk about trauma when there are no words, when all that we have to help us remember is our suppressed body memory? In what ways can dance express the unspeakable? And how can our physical memory help us understand the past?

With his work STILL/life, Qudus Onikeku, Nigerian dancer and choreographer of the group YK Projects in Paris, was a guest at Ballhaus Naunynstraße within the context of the series We are Tomorrow. Out of this meeting grew the desire for a long-term collaboration in order to focus on African Diaspora themes: interrogating remembering, collective memory, political and social responsibility, and how art can reflect these issues.

We almost forgot constructs fictitious scenes from witness reports on real experiences. Stories of persons who have experienced inconceivable atrocities are pieced together to create a monologue ‒ without making reference to individual incidents. In this way, history is retold without foregrounding the specific political context. Because we live in a world where political discourse and hash tags often matter more than the human stories behind them.

Qudus Onikeku and his team have developed the project with seven dancers of diverse backgrounds and biographies in Paris, concluding it in a last project phase in Berlin. With energetic movement, storytelling and music, Onikeku lays the focus of the night’s performance on catharsis: the past as an entity returning to talk about the experienced horror that is still present.

A coproduction of YK Projects and Ballhaus Naunynstraße, funded by NATIONALES PERFORMANCE NETZ (NPN) Coproduction Fund for Dance with funds of the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media based on a decree of the German Bundestag, the German-French Fonds Transfabrik for Performing Arts, and the Conseil régional d‘Île de France. In cooperation with the Bank of Industry Nigeria, Goethe-Institut, Lagos, Nigeria; Parc de la Villette, Paris; CCN de Créteil et du Val de Marne/ Cie Käfig; Collectif Culture Essonne; Fontenay-en-Scènes, Fontenay-sous-Bois; Théâtre Paul Eluard, Choisy-le-roi; La Briqueterie/CDC du Val-de-Marne; and BlonBa ‒ théâtre de l’Arlequin, Morsang-sur-Orge.