A festival proudly presented as by and for queer, trans, Black and indigenous folk as well as people of colour, the Emerging Change Dance Festival (Sep 21 – Oct 29) finds a model for itself in robust and resilient mycelia; it hopes to present an image of collaboration as complete as the entanglement of those root-like fungi. The festival promises to turn the spaces of Uferstudios and Radialsystem into portals of transformation with performances, talks, and workshops that reject tokenism and draw inspiration from the speculative fiction writer and activist Adrienne Maree brown’s Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds.
Acclaimed dancemaker Mayfield Brooks is flying in from Brooklyn to present Whale Fall: abyss, a cello-scored solo about becoming wild and becoming multitude, about Black grief and regeneration. Taking inspiration from the death of the ocean’s largest mammals, whose bodies decompose and feed myriad lifeforms, brooks’ sparse dance piece considers the rejuvenation of decay.
Berlin’s own femBlack Performance Collective will also feature, with another space/memory, a six-person meditation on memory and the futures that can spring from recollections of the past. Other highlights include the residency showing from the queer performer Djibril Sall, who has been starring in Bishop Black’s Flight of the Canaries at Ballhaus Naunynstraße since 2023, and Izmir-born Berlin-based dancemaker Elvan Tekin’s performance, XÊR, an exploration of the voice of language, identity and the body that developed from her masters in choreography at the prestigious Ernst Busch Hochschule.
- Radialsystem, Uferstudios, Tanzfabrik Berlin, Casa Kuà, GLADT, Sep 21-Oct 19, details.
