Strike

On a mirrored platform in the middle of the audience, two dancers meet. Their movements shift between the intensity of martial arts and the fluid grace of water ballet—a physical confrontation that gets under your skin. Fragmented beats and lines from Azzlack rap fill the space, throwing familiar codes into uncertainty.

Strike, the new work by Frankfurt-based director and choreographer Simon Möllendorf and his company Dorfproduct, explores racialized images of masculinity: the violence attributed to these bodies, and the violence inflicted upon them—through gazes, framing, and exploitation. Sensual and unsettling, the performance makes experiences of being labeled, resisting, and refusing physically tangible. It asks what it could mean for these bodies to go on strike. A choreography that shifts the way we see.