Berne
Edition 2026
In «Untitled (Nostalgia, Act 3)» the South-African born, Europe-based choreographer Tiran Willemse invokes his own multiple histories of dance through a kaleidoscope of the 19th century ballet classic «Giselle», the «Kuduro» from Angola, and the Nigerian genre «Alanta». The ghost story of Giselle becomes the primary vehicle through which Willemse gives his past selves space to be as they are – ghosts, not dead, who have not left fully, though they may have been asked to. Both an exercise and an exorcism, «Untitled (Nostalgia, Act 3)» is an evocation of Black experience within European contexts, and a thinly veiled masquerade of its absurdities. As differently gendered bodies claim space for expression, their haunting simultaneously haunts cisnormativity. In limbo between presence and absence, these bodies – rendered invisible, suppressed, (as certain histories often are) invited, or not – have nevertheless come back to reclaim Willemse’s body.