Première 12.09.2025 at 20:00 + 13.09.2025 ar 20:00 – Kunsthafen im Rhenania
Additional performances: 08.11.2025 Leopold-Hoesch Museum Düren and 23.01.2026 Tales festival FFT Düsseldorf
In a place setting layered with contradictions, bodies gather—each one shaped by a different reality. Some move under the weight of silence, others pulse with resistance. They carry history, roles and expectations. Existing in systems that decide who is seen, who is heard, who is allowed to move freely.
Through the body, each movement reveals a different truth—one of survival, of defiance, of transformation. This work is a tapestry of lived realities, held together by breath, rhythm, and the shared desire to reclaim space. It is an invitation to witness, to feel the beauty and brutality of what it means to exist within, and beyond, the frame. It conjuresstrength from what was buried.
And somewhere in the in-between—in the silences, the slips, the almosts—something else begins. A new language. A different truth. One that doesn’t explain itself, but demands to be felt.
„Exotiques“ is not only a performance. It is an odyssey, a procession, a voyage, an emergence.
Funded by MKW Diversitätsfonds and Kulturamt Köln
Artistic Direction, Choreography, Dance: Willie Stark
Choreographic Input, Dance: Yasmine Calasse & Laura Schönlau
Music Composition, Live music: Fallon Mayanja
Outside Eye: Balindile ka Ngcobo
Photography & videography: Paula Schür
Costumes: Kora Hamm with Willie Stark
Lights: Björn Nienhuys
Business Management: Bibiana Leufgen
Research showing 12.12.2025 – Weltkunstzimmer Düsseldorf
Work period: April/ May and November/ December
The research questions the boundaries imposed by traditional social ideals and structures. It unfolds as a dynamic investigation into how identity can be reimagined beyond boundaries and binary categories—in an awareness of multiplicity, complexity, and subtlety. Through movement and voice, the performers embody stories of silenced voices, inherited scars of violence, and the unshakeable spirit of resistance. Each moment becomes a trace of memory, a call for justice, and an act of transformation. Narratives are rewritten, symbols bent, and codes reconfigured to create new landscapes—spaces where identity remains fluid, collective, and constantly changing.
Funded by Kunststiftung NRW
Artistic Direction, Choreography, Dance: Willie Stark
Choreographic Input, Dance: Yasmine Calasse, Yasmine Calasse, Dominique Elenga, Melena Tortoh, Winett Ardouin, kemelo nozipho sehlapelo, Nadine Ndungula Kraus
Music Composition, Live music: Fallon Mayanja
Videography: Paula Schür
Photography: Jana Stumpe
WILLIE STARK 