Tanzquartier Wien

Congratulations and thank you! What a pleasure to write about Rakete Festival in this context. Queerness, Blackness, body and transformation. The obvious similarities sometimes reveal the biggest differences. What does it mean to be Black…? We cannot pin it down to one thing and the same goes for being queer. The multitude of versions we create and unfold through our art and existence is gorgeous, powerful, inspiring and always worthwhile.

I am biased and I am proud of it. What else can I do in a world that still doesn’t hear and see me when I’m performing vulnerability and honesty? To see queer and/or Black creators stand their ground and show something personal gives me goosebumps, and regardless if ‘I like it’ or ‘I don’t like it’ I want to see it, hear it and give it space to breathe and grow. Some of the things I witness, even if I cannot understand them fully, I can choose to sympathize with, as they allow me to step outside of myself and view the world through someone else’s story. Some other things I witness, I feel like they are part of my own story, a fraction of what I feel and experience myself, put into poetic dances of resilience, reassuring me that I’m not completely out of my mind for thinking and feeling certain things. And, as we all know by now: representation matters!

Masculinity – what does it even mean? I would describe myself as possessing a quite masculine energy while having equally pronounced feminine traits. So what am I now: masculine or feminine? With gender being such a fluid yet fragile construct, anything we want to imagine is possible. And as a society, we still have a lot to do for everyone to feel like their life, their existence is valid as it is.

I definitely enjoyed the push and pull of the performer’s masculinities, revealing that all of us somehow exist in duality, or at least in duality, if not more than that…

Who, what, when, where is masculinity defined? It always seems we know the answers, but as soon as we watch queer masculinity unfold in front of our eyes, don’t we all see a little bit of ourselves in it? And thus making it impossible to understand what ‘masculinity’ or ‘femininity’ even means. We are just who we are and we call certain characteristics masculine or feminine…not really knowing how to even define these two ‘opposites’.

A testosterone-charged heartbeat, feeding into the stereotypes of gay masculine tenderness. Just to describe the setting of the scene a little bit, for those who couldn’t experience it themselves. We follow the sound of the throbbing bass, the two performers are on opposite sides of the dark room. On the edges of the room we sit down wherever we want. A slow yet charged duet. What is it that we are witnessing? A moment of lust, deconstructed into a dance piece. Love, intimacy and the entangling of two oiled-up bodies. Caressing the audience with shapes and silhouettes, shamelessly wrestling a dance of love in the ring, keeping up the suspense for the audience and making us hold our breath. Moments of silence to feel the vibrations of the heavy and loud bass that underlines the story caner teker and Élie Autin are telling in front of us. And we have our own perspective on performances, which is just as it should be – always adding our own life experience into the mix and, in a way, only able to see what we can perceive. I love performance porn – especially when the performers are able to maintain the tension in a room full of gazing eyes just as if we were in an intimate setting. Applause! Applause! (And don’t get me wrong, performance porn, to me, is anything that involves tension, sensuality, sexuality, poetry and intention.)

As we walk into the second studio, a similar tension invites us in. Between flashing lights, shadows and silhouettes tiran takes us on an emotional journey. As I like to work with and for emotions myself, this piece really caressed me in a special way. From a sinking heart over a hill of teasing tears to a smile that stayed with me for the rest of the night. Simple repetitive gestures, a soft yet steady mumbling, a space to inhabit and an audience to dance to. I specifically write dance to and not dance for, because it feels like tiran dances this piece for himself and we are merely witnessing Black gorgeousness unfold itself. The lights continue to flicker, the incomprehensible words turn into sentences, the hard movements of the dancer break into soft pieces. Within a second, the energy changes and the artist knows exactly how to play with the audience and the power relation in this setting. What seems like a light-hearted ending is the hardest punch of them all.

We are allowed to be spectators of the untold stories, and we should watch and listen closely, because in the nuance of differences lies our power. To eventually not be seen as just one but as a multitude of possible experiences of Blackness…and because whoever we are and however we behave, our masculinities and femininities always exist in relation to the color of our skin. Who is given space and attention to just be – whenever, wherever and however they want – and who needs to reclaim and fight for this right over and over again?

So what does it take for each and every one of us to perform queerness and/or Blackness? Some shaking with nerves, a daring attitude, an emotional desire for a better future (as cheesy as that might sound), and then we confidently bring these visions to life, telling one story at a time. Showcasing a fraction of the oppressed and unknown wonders of experiencing life in this time, space and body.

PS: What a heart-warming moment, when the second piece ends and we all stand on the stage of the first performance. Revealing that we have unknowingly acted as co-creators, side by side.

mirabella paidamwoyo* dziruni’s (born 1995 in Graz, Austria, degree from the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna in 2021) interdisciplinary artistic practice focuses on empowerment and collaborative healing processes. Inspired by everyday life experiences, dziruni uses and develops decolonial and anti-racist methods to take up space in diverse public and private spaces with non-binary, queer, Black aesthetics. Moving bodies, self-presentation and continuous exchange of energy as well as painting, design and sculpture are the main components of these complex creations, representing visible signs of change.