Dance among the Water Lilies • Tiran Willemse, Untitled (Nostalgia, Act 3). Gallery version
7 pm and 8.30 pm, Water Lilies Room
© Ben Zurbriggen fotografie
Tiran Willemse has developed a performance-based practice that pays special attention to space, imagination, movement and sound. By focusing on the way in which they are connected with constructions of race, gender and memory. In Untitled (Nostalgia Act 3), he calls forth a complex legacy in which the precision of movements that have made their escape from the ballet Giselle gradually make way for the energy of urban African dances.
Tiran Willemse
Untitled (Nostalgia, Act 3) - Gallery version
Choreographer and performer: Tiran Willemse
A South African virtuoso dancer, choreographer and researcher based in Zürich, Tiran Willemse gives substance to his own dance stories. His presence and movements generate emotional power imbued with subtle delicacy. (He was awarded Swiss Prize for Performance in 2022). Stealthily invaded by phantoms and reminiscences, his body neither contrasts nor hierarchizes past and present, near and far, on the contrary revealing rich, unprecedented similarities in them. In the footsteps of Giselle, a ghost story, Tiran Willemse presents us with a kaleidoscope of that ballet, emblematic of 19th-century academic dance, and of urban African dances such as Kudoro and Alanta. Caught in a space haunted by invisible figures, Tiran Willemse’s body creates a landscape conducive to conjuring up the intimate questions that foster his melancholy, as well as to an almost cinematic form of burlesque. Untitled (Nostalgia, Act 3) is a black experience in European contexts. Like a nostalgic, haunted landscape.
Concept, artistic direction and performance: Tiran Willemse
Dramaturgy Andros Zins-Browne
Music: Tobias Koch
Choreographic advice: Laurent Chétouane
Produced by: Paelden Tamnyen, Rabea Grand Jointly produced by: Gessnerallee Zürich, Arsenic– Center for Contemporary Scenic Arts, Lausanne Supported by: City of Zurich Culture, the Canton of Zurich’s Office of Culture, Pro Helvetia, Swiss Foundation for Performing Artists (SIS), Pour-cent Culturel Migros Production created on 8 December 2023 at the Gessnerallee, Zurich
Dissemination: Tristan Barani
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