xoxo

Berlin choreographer Sebastian Matthias, a former tanzhaus nrw Factory Artist, presents his first play for youths, immediately touching on a delicate topping: Sex. In “xoxo” – chatroom language for “hugs and kisses” – he, together with his audience, asks questions aimed at intimacy and desire: How does it feel when someone comes so close, I can feel the breath? Should I stay or should I go? What does it mean to be near somebody? Insecurity, excitement and doubts sometimes conflict with the wish to explore other bodies. Three dancers and one musician, with the audience, create body spaces in which humans can communicate with one another, find common ground and discover touches, individual safe spaces and different forms of intimacy in the process.
Youths today are confronted with a multitude of images and film material showing naked bodies and sexually explicit content, very early on, through social media and other channels. Experiential spaces for body knowledge and physical communication, on the other hand, are few and far between.
Thus, knowledge transfer about one’s own body is handed over to the mass media. The “xoxo” dancers revert to their own body knowledge in order to open a space for the highly sensitive topical complex of intimate interaction: So, the piece circles on topics like power dynamics, insecurity and fear, confidence, pain, consent, boundaries and pleasure. Far from sexualised images on the internet, “xoxo” asks for the meaning in desiring another body and encourages the self-determined exchange of emotions. Following its premiere at Kampnagel in Hamburg in November 2019, it's now guest at tanzhaus nrw.

Duration: 50  min.

We kindly ask you to write us an email to ticketservice@tanzhaus-nrw.de or call 0211 17 270-56, if you're interested in the touch tour and/or audio description. 

*This offer is for audience members with diverse sensory modalities to make live performance more accessible: Through touching e.g. the scenery or the costumes before the performance they can be experienced multisensory.