Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Brussels dance review — queer identities and wild bodies

Brussels’ Kunstenfestivaldesarts is something of a cool kid on the European performing arts scene. Since 2018, its young directing team, Daniel Blanga Gubbay and Dries Douibi, have brought successes to quirky venues around the Belgian capital and scored a number of European premieres that go on to tour widely. Over this year’s opening weekend, there were plenty of cool kids onstage, too, with queer identities a common thread.

You know a dance production is going to be intense when there are sweat marks all over the floor before the lights have even dimmed. An orgy of twerking, thrusting and vogueing to a furious beat greets the audience in Nadia Beugré’s Prophetic (We’ve Already Been Born), a world premiere inspired by the transgender community of Abidjan, Ivory Coast.

Beugré was born in the country; here she has made space for six transgender and non-binary performers to move between showmanship and vulnerability onstage. At one point, we see them do their make-up and get dressed, before rising slowly to the sound of Ravel’s Boléro. They bark and shout at the audience, as if to turn the aggression they’ve encountered on to us.

A couple of dancers share morsels from their personal stories, but Prophetic never feels exploitative. Instead, it captures complex personalities through movement and the sense of community between them — as when the cast braids a dishevelled heap of hair together, quietly.

Braiding made an even more prominent appearance in Adam and Amina Seid Tahir’s Several attempts at braiding my way home. This 45-minute piece from Sweden opens with Adam Seid Tahir, the only performer, undoing braids clipped to their hair and meticulously weaving them into a large, shaggy carpet. Their slow, supple way of pacing around the stage, freeze-framing some steps as their face distorted into silent words, was intriguing, even if the various scenes felt disconnected from each other.

Lenio Kaklea’s Fauve caused some whiplash, too, with an abrupt change of tone and style midway through. In the initial scene, three performers walk in and launch into often suggestive steps with cool, detached energy — slapping their buttocks, shimmying on all fours, hinting at vogueing moves.

The Athens-born Kaklea, who also appears onstage, builds up to a complex back-and-forth between the cast, yet abruptly changes tack in the second half. The trio returns topless, holding hands in a circle then climbing on top of each other — and on poles — like mysterious animals. Kaklea calls this a “rewilding of bodies.” I’ll take the civilised first half over it — there is far more for choreography lovers.

★★★★☆

To June 3, kfda.be