Zu einer Gestalt drappierte Bananenstaude
Enrique Klaus

Ming Poon:
Exotic Animal

Wort - und Tanzperformance

2023 steptext dance project Dance
Th
20:00
Duration: ca. 90 min
In English language

18 € / 10 € reduced
Bremen Pass 3 €
Kultursemesterticket available free of charge from 3 days before the start of the event or from 15 minutes before the start of the event at the box office.

Alternatively you can reserve tickets by phone 0421 520 80 70 (Mon, Wed – Fri 10 a.m. – 2 p.m. or answering machine) or email ticket@schwankhalle.de. Pick up at the box office until 30 min before the performance starts. Tickets available online and at all Nordwest-Ticket ticket agencies. Box office open from 60 min before the start of the event.

This performance contains allusions to cultural stereotypes and the racialized (white) gaze and may contain triggers for people affected by racism,
contain triggers.
General information about the accessibility of the Schwankhalle you can find here ↗.

„It is one letter away from erotic. It promises adventure. Exotic is somewhere far away and foreign. Exotic is strange, but also very appealing and desirable. It is always over there, not here; them, not us; you, never me. Exotic is dark and mysterious, but its threat is tamed and contained.The exotic industry has become a big and lucrative market. It has often been touted as a fun and light way to promote the appreciation and experience of foreign cultures. But is it as innocent as it appears? What lurks beneath its foreigner-friendly surface? But is it as innocent as it appears? What lurks beneath its foreigner-friendly surface?“ (Ming Poon)

›Exotic Animal‹ both invites and confronts the exotic gaze. Staring defiantly back, it attempts to shift the power relation between the gazer and itself. Drawing on his personal experience as a dancer of Asian origin, Ming Poon looks at how eurocentrism, globalisation and cultural consumerism contribute to the exoticisation of his body for the art market. Approaching the body as a site on which meanings, values and boundaries are inscribed, he interrogates how the exotic gaze displaces and appropriates his body, turning it into a cultural commodity and a symbol of subjugation.
The public dance performance by the Asian-born artist Ming Poon is the opening event of the Think Tank „Create more community - imagine the other“ by steptext dance project, TanzRAUM Nord in cooperation with the Dachverband Tanz Deutschland.

Ming Poon works with applied choreography and creates choreographic interventions, where spectators are invited to exercise their agency to create change. His works are interactive and collaborative in design and involve vulnerability, care, peripherality and failure as performance strategies. He initiated Asian Performing Artists Lab (APAL) in 2020 and is a founding member of United Networks gUG, a non-profit organisation for marginalised BIPoC artists in Germany. He is currently a fellow in the Berlin Artistic Research Programme, where he researches on the intersectionality between decolonisation, feminism and queerness, through Nan Dan (男旦), the male-to-female cross-dressing performance form in Chinese opera. Ming Poon is based in Berlin. mingapur.com

In the frame of:
Th—Sa
13:00
»Create more community - imagine the other« Diversity and community building in contemporary dance steptext dance project, Think Tank
Fr
20:00
Leonard Cruz, Kossi S. Aholou-Wokawui, hannahmadance »Shape Shifting Game«, »Be-Greifen«, »INVASION(S)« steptext dance project, Tanz

Credits

Concept and Choreography: Ming Poon
Dramaturgy: Dandan Liu
Sound Design: Farah Hazim
Light Design: Christian Maith

With support by Bureau Ritter/TANZPAKT RECONNECT funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media within the framework of the NEUSTART KULTUR aid program for dance, Senator for Culture of the City of Bremen and Dachverband Tanz Deutschland