Tanzquartier Wien

(all third-person pronouns are written as oo (ü), the gender-free third-person pronoun in Farsi and can refer to any of the five performers.)

Amidst the tempest,
I sit within waves of sorrow.
In a broken raft.

Since the moment my name was written,
the seal of grief was set
upon the fate of humankind.

You left me withered, led me to thirst,
In mirages of unfulfilled dreams,
torment of endless catastrophes.

I bear on my shoulders the weight
of yearning and disgrace.
What tale shall I tell?
To whom shall I complain?
When by my own hands,
I set fire to my anxious and bleeding heart.

Translated from the lyrics sung by Sorour Darabi.
Originally written by Rahim Moeini Kermanshahi and sung by Marzieh in the 1950ies

In the ruins of a land that once stood solid, the smoke fills the space as the jewels of this town suspend (in time) from the sky, dripping in sweat. We are the ghosts and they are the survivors; in both pain and glory. Broken yet gentle with the thick air. Seen in the reflection of what’s left from the ruins: a potential. They are knowing. They are the vessels of a past that has gone unnoticed. How much is under the skin? The spine begins to tell the story. After all, the spine always sees what’s behind. With every undulation it unleashes a new secret. The hands conjure up an energy to rebuild what was destroyed. The impossible task of putting the ruins back together. Will it ever take shape again? The ruins seductively call for their thirst. Poisoning them with a slow sensuous revival. A sexual awakening. It is a token of a memory yet to be erased by the heat of their mouth. I lick my lips at the desire of wanting to taste it.

Melancholy recalls a precious memory. The moonlight slows down the chaos. It gives time for transformation. A sensual touch takes the breath and opens up the gate to release a voice long been trapped. The moon hangs by the horizon. Resisting to sink. The chain is cemented and frozen in place. The hour of horror is showing itself through the screams heard from the corners. Can we bear witness to the ache waiting to be inflicted? Moving towards it is the only answer for the heart to persist. The erotic touch wakes up a deep wound. Shaking the air. A line is drawn from oo’s breath as they search for an escape. Caught amongst the ruins and the evidence of theft.

Oo searches for the thin light cutting through the land. Bouncing back the light, the voice warms up the cold edges. The voice rejuvenates us, the ghosts. The ruins break further, slowly becoming new ground. Calming the storm that lingers in the distance. Everyone moves at the speed of a memory coming back to itself. The clouds gather above the horizon and the sky begins to fall, as they move upwards. The sky swallows them whole and spits them back floating. Water spreads and grows into dark puddles. Is this a new place? What did the ruins make? Each voice is a threat to silence.

Waiting to be fed. A firm grab. The desire of being taken over. To let go of the weight. The weight of all the untold stories trapped in the back of their head. Arousing the wish to enter. The thirst gives way to fire. In an embrace they fall into each other. Romance is shying away from morphing into its own curves. The desire gives back to the night and what was once stolen. Sliding to the edges of the mouth, to the limit of what the tongue can hold. The wax engraving the skin in its place. The layers waiting to shed. Carrying the body that holds the truth in the depth of the impossible. Is this a testimony to the poetics and politics of death?

Oo is held through the burning, through the sounds trapped behind the flames. The harp is always a reminder to us ghosts that the survivors are calling us to be kind with our gaze. We are periphery, the container that keeps them from spilling dry. Separation calls the collapse. Holding each other delays the crash. But it is unavoidable. Fingers trace the moist skin searching for a surface to call home. Letting go only to look for each other again. Testing the touch and how much it wants to hold on. They drip inside the cracks, mending it with every touch. Thirsting for the night to cum to an end.

In this layered night, prisms emerge as a tool to refract desires and histories. Just as a prism splits light into a spectrum of colors, queer communion fractures and reveals the hidden hues of reality and memory. Each story that passes through the prism shifts, refracts, and intensifies, reflecting not only its original form but also every fragment that makes it whole. This prism becomes a way of seeing—to understand each angle of longing and seduction in a new light. Each poetic line is imagined as a beam cast into darkness, now splitting into vivid strands of myth and magic that blend and transform through its lens. The promise that day might come.

What oo changes overflows from the chest. Drunk on the liquid of torment. Like a fish out of water. Fucking the chain that no longer serves a purpose. It can no longer tighten around what has escaped and become fluid. In their reflections in the puddles, they gather their own image and drown in it, cleansing. Grabbing onto each other as they fall through a crescendo of a force that was held captive. They hold each other through the collapse. The unleashed energy rises them and pushes them back down. Resisting the toxic goo that kept them intact. Gliding and dragging each other away from chaos. A divine collapse. They respond to what the land has planned for them. The land knows all too well. They continue to invoke a future that is only known to them. To those who tended to the ruins.

Bita Bell is a dance artist and composer with a BA in music composition and an MFA in dance. Born in Iran, she studied in Hong Kong, lived in the U.S. from 2012 and is currently based in Vienna. She recently completed an Artistic Research Fellowship at THIRD DAS Graduate School in Amsterdam, where she self-published a zine titled, containing multitudes, at times fragmented—a compilation of personal, political, and poetic writings drawn from a diasporic experience in urgent times.She is a recipient of the 2023 Startstipendium for Music and Performing Arts from the Austrian Federal Ministry for Arts and Culture and the 2024 DanceWeb Scholarship for Vienna’s Impulstanz International Festival. bitabell.com