Performance by Cilai Herrmann
This is not an accident
A river. A human. Both water bodies. Both once fluid, untamed, and multiple. Both straightened.
This solo is a choreography of resistance, shaped by Cilai’s experience as a non-binary body raised alongside the Rhine: a river they have only ever known as channelled, bordered, disciplined. But once, it meandered in a multiple. They go in search of the Rhine’s queer traces, listening to what was lost when its waters were straightened, and its movement became binary.
What happens to a river when we force it to flow in straightened line? What happens to a gendered body?
Through chanting, looping, storytelling and drag Cilai asks how bodies of water, human and more-than-human, that were straightened into a resource can queer themselves again.
It starts with a performance but emerges into a format where the audience is invited to sing, move and dance as well.
When: 24 October 19:45
Where: Tiivistämö Kaasutehtaankatu 1, 00540 Helsinki
About the artist:
Cilai Herrmann (they/them) is a dancer, choreographer, and facilitator whose practice is rooted in ecological and queer inquiry, using art as a tool for transformation. Rather than cultivating a single artistic voice, a monoculture, they work with compost piles of practices, moving between theatre stages, gallery spaces, and outdoor environments such as glaciers. Their work is radical, as in going towards the roots, it explores relationships between human and more-than-human worlds, asking how bodies can become sites of listening, contamination, and collective imagination.
