(Rating: Five stars out of five)
Berlin-based collective ABA NAIA have been developing their anarchic, body-centred performative language since 2017, working through themes of identity, sexuality and resistance. Their latest piece, Super Superficial arrives at HAU following its premiere at Tanztage 2025 and judging by the sold-out run, anticipation was high.
The performance opens with a striking image: three naked women in silhouette, their poses evoking classical reliefs with sculptural bodies, composed and maiden-esqe. It’s an image art history knows well: the nude female form presented for contemplation – tender and non-confrontational. Then the image quietly cracks. For three minutes, nothing happens. The performers sit on or beside the stage speakers, completely still. The audience is left with little to do but look. Gradually details emerge: a tampon string, bruises on skin, small gestures of breath. Slowly, the performers begin to return the gaze and change states, singling out audience members, watching us watching them. It’s one of the most powerful sequences of the evening: the nude body reclaimed not as spectacle but as agency.
What follows moves between grotesque comedy, physical theatre and surreal visual gags. The performers – Rafuska Marks, Mariana Romagnani and Manoela Rangel – demonstrate a sharp instinct for clowning, pushing their bodies into awkward, exaggerated shapes. In one scene, getting dressed becomes a preposterous ordeal; once fully dressed, the garments are immediately stripped away again, exposing the absurdity of the ritual. The performers commit fully, executing each sequence with explosive confidence.
Sound design by Kriton Beyer is essential to the atmosphere. His specialist instrument, the daxophone, creates a scratchy, improvised score that pulses beneath the action and amplifies the performer’s movement. The show’s imagery veers gleefully between playful and unsettling. In another memorable scene, the performers chase a video projection of a nipple squirting milk across the stage, before choreographer Kysy Fischer enters, visibly pregnant, spraying them with douches of liquid held to her chest. The moment teeters between grotesque humour and primal ritual, folding together multiple archetypes of femininity. What makes Super Superficial so compelling is its refusal to soften itself for the audience. ABA NAIA stages something radical: women occupying their bodies on their own terms.
