Backstage with ZOE

Hello, Zoe. You are currently in rehearsals at tanzhaus nrw for your new production MAWU LISA. How are the rehearsals coming along?

Fine, I would say they are coming along fine. But as usual, there is, of course, always pressure, stress, and expectations that are breathing down on hard on your neck. Because we are dealing with an emotionally very complex topic, with lived Afro-diasporic realities, multi-layered feelings come into play. It can sometimes be hard to find the space to truly process things while you are also bound by a production logic from which a complete piece has to result. To navigate this is the greatest challenge to me as the artistic direction who also performs herself.

So, a substantive examination that is also highly personal. Where do you start to fit this into a staging?

There is a lot of material, very auto-ethnographic and strongly nourished by the participating artists’ biographies, as well as my own. To sort and to structure all this is a challenge. I believe we are coping quite well, yet I wished we had some more weeks to rehearse.

It is now the start of October, and you still have the whole month, so about four weeks of rehearsals, right?

Exactly, we will rehearse for another three weeks, then there is one-week-long break coming up that segues into the final rehearsal week with the subsequent premiere. All in all, we will have had close to seven weeks of rehearsals.

You are not alone in working on the piece, you rather collaborate with HAUS MAWU, which you yourself set up. What kind of structure is HAUS MAWU, and who is a part of it?

HAUS MAWU is an idea I have had for quite some time. It has been conceived as a company or as a production initiative to tell intersectional, feminist, queer and diasporic stories, in whatever medium fits. At this moment, it is the stage, but I also envision other possible formats. HAUS MAWU is an independent company that does not (yet) have a fixed line-up, because I need more sustainable resources to implement that. Right now, it is made up of artists whom I have known for years, mainly from ballroom and the Black dance culture and scene. They are currently part of HAUS MAWU: Gifty Lartey, Juan David Mendez, Mandhla Ndubiwa, Maryline Ogboko, and Shayne Stubbs. All of them are fantastic artists and versatile performers that have gathered under the roof of HAUS MAWU to realise this piece with me. The term “house” is an homage to the ballroom culture from which my artistic practice came. At the same time, HAUS MAWU is not a ballroom house but rather a merging that is reminiscent of the feeling of community and belonging. I consciously decided to write “Haus” in German because we want to emphasise diasporic experiences: We are Black, we live in Germany, and all of that is part of our reality. Being German does not exclude being Black, even if being Black oftentimes does not figure in narratives about being German.
The name Mawu originates in Fon mythology; Mawu is the female aspect of a creator god in Vodún, representing the moon, the female cycle, the creational force. I want the ensemble to stand in that same energy. It is an independent ensemble; I view the artists who are now part of it as collaborative partners with whom the collective reforms itself, time and again.

What is the audience going to experience in MAWU LISA?

The story of the piece takes inspiration from the Fon creation myth: Mawu, the female aspect, created humans from clay. When she saw that human life was full of conflict, she sent Lisa, the male aspect, her twin brother or son, depending on the interpretation, to gift the humans tools and knowledge to live in community.
The piece is framed by this creation myth, yet with a focus on Black diasporic experience. There are many pop cultural references, political and emotional moments that mirror Black realities, but also moments of connection and healing. It is about the life “in-between”, about the feeling of neither completely belonging here nor there yet still creating spaces of solidarity. It is our Blackness, but more so the feeling of not belonging anywhere that connects us. For our lived realities in being Black vary strongly, and they are complex, while, simultaneously, our individual experiences of and in life become heavily generalised by the white majority. And – just to have mentioned it – the audience should not expect al ball on a stage. It is ballroom-infused, but MAWU LISA is not a ball.

How do you make this Afro-diasporic legend perceptible on stage?

Over the last few years, I have been developing an artistic practice in which I would opt for the description of narrator rather than that of a choreographer for myself. MAWU LISA will be an interdisciplinary piece. While there will be much choreography and movement, it will also feature song, spoken word, costuming and set design. Everything is also actively narrating. The audience will join us on stage, so they will be right in the middle of all that is happening. That is a spatial design that I take from club and ballroom culture and how I also know it from Vodún shows and festivities where there are no clear distinctions between performers and spectators.

The Guardian recently published an article about global “end times fascism”, authored by Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor. They wrote that only a strong collective movement would be able to oppose this, a movement marked by, among other things, spirituality and strong narratives. I was reminded of your work while reading this essay. Why are you so interested in spirituality, myth, and the telling of stories?

I have always been interested. As a child, I was fascinated by fairytales, the Brothers Grimm, Andersen, later The One Thousand and One Nights/ Arabian Nights. This coincided with an emerging interest in mythology in my youth, first Greek, then Egyptian, Nordic, later West African. I grew up lacking my father’s cultural context and only got to know him late and only then found out that spirituality has deep-seated roots in my family on my father’s side. My grandmother, for example, is a revered priestess. When I first visited Benin, I understood the true meaning of Vodún, when you do not look at it from a Eurocentric, colonial perspective. It is also important to understand how Vodún was intentionally stigmatised. Vodún simply is something else entirely compared to its portrayal in the media. Similar to pagan practice denounced as witchcraft. An underlying motif was often the intention to divide communities to eventually conquer and expropriate them.
According to sociologist and political scientist Silvia Federici, the colonial system was a direct result of the system of witch-hunts that displayed similar behaviour: It was easy to be divisive with people after accusing somebody of witchcraft. If a rich widow was denounced as a witch, much property and real estate could exchange ownership in this way and come into possession of the state. As soon as someone was denounced, chaos ensued. Some women had to die, and quickly, land property, power and resources went to the state. These historical facts are in conjunction with the emergence of capitalism and colonialism. The reappropriation of witch practice, like in FEMINASAGA, my first piece, on the one hand, and the remembrance of Black, cultural, spiritual practice on the other is, therefore, also always a confrontation with and against patriarchy.
Making art is a spiritual practice for me. I wish my audience to experience transformation, to be confronted with themselves, to feel empowered, maybe finding their own practice, without dogma, without patriarchal authority. Spirituality, to me, is a way of creating connection, with oneself, with nature, with the community.

Voguing and ballroom aesthetics figure largely in your work. Where do you see the connecting lines between ballroom culture and stage-based arts?

I see it like this: It is an accomplishment for theatre stages to have ballroom taking place on them now. I was not a fan of theatre in the past because I could not find myself in the tales and bodies on stage. That has changed in so many places today. Lately, for example, I went to see Répértorio by Davi Pontes and Wallace Ferreira here at tanzhaus nrw. I absolutely went in. This work completely absorbed me for 45 minutes. It had something that began to resonate. Previously, I entered theatre spaces to watch battles or concerts or, later, balls. They gave me the feeling that I could watch those formats for ten hours straight. My question was, how can I connect this to theatre? I wanted to channel this energy into theatre and create a true encounter between these forms. My artistic practice, therefore, is interdisciplinary and eclectic. I combine live music, ballroom, hip-hop, costume, satire, storytelling. That is all a process of artistic work. My practice, like the cultures that inform me, is a continuing, living process.

There is a voguing move that has almost become synonymous, emblematic, for voguing, and it circulates on the internet as a meme, most often under the name Death Drop. What does this move mean? Maybe as an example of a ballroom move that many people know: What does it show us about ballroom culture?

First of all: That move is not called Death Drop, but quite simply Dip. The term Death Drop was popularised by the TV format RuPaul's Drag Race. However, the term is not in use within the ballroom community itself. Allegedly, meaning according to legend, some people injured themselves so badly while performing this move that, at some point, it came to be called Death Drop outside the scene. But originally, it is just Dip. The move comes from Old Way or Pop Dip and Spin, the first form of voguing. At the very beginning, people simply spoke of posing, later of voguing, as a tribute to Vogue magazine a source of inspiration at the time. Dips originally referred to all poses performed on the floor. This could be the classic Dip we know today, albeit in a less dramatic version, or various floor poses evocative of breakdancing. That is because the dancers all danced in the same clubs back then. Thus, many connections were made between what happened in popping or b-boying and what morphed into voguing. These styles influenced and permeated each other. Basically, every pose, every freeze that ended on the floor was called a Dip. With the advancement of music, what we now call ballroom beats, the tempo became faster and faster. At some point, these dramatic musical crashes happened, and people began to put the Dip exactly on this moment. Like a period at the end of a sentence, a musical exclamation mark. That grooved perfectly with the sound, in rhythm.
As the music accelerated, the dance itself became more dramatic. The elegant, controlled descent into a floor pose became a jump, a fall. Dancers literally let themselves fall into the ground, often forcefully. The Dip has thus become a very intense, graceful, yet at times also very hard movement. And that's exactly why the Dip sometimes carries violence; it contains a real risk of injury. But this harshness also bears vulnerability and truth. The move represents a piece of the reality of life in the ballroom community, of pain, risk, survival. At the same time, however, it is also a moment of incredible power. Even though you fall down in the move, it lifts everything around you: you fall to the ground and everyone else jumps up. If a Dip is executed correctly, the room will explode. A collective hype results, a kind of countermovement. The fall creates a joint upswing. The entire room reacts to this. This is one of the magical ballroom moments: when one person dips and everyone else feels this burst of energy. Yet you only really grasp this when you have been to a ball yourself, having experienced the cultural codes. Each room has its own rules and meanings. The fact that the Dip has become an internet meme at all is testament to its power. It holds this stark contrast: a dynamic fall, a crash to the ground, and a simultaneous moment of collective energy and empowerment.

Will we see Dips in the piece?

 Yes!

Yeliz Pazar taught me that within waacking arm movements resonate forms of martial arts and self-defence strategies. Is there something similar in voguing and in ballroom culture?

Yes, absolutely. Waacking and voguing are sistered to each other, as it were, even if they differ in some respects, such as point of origin and the music. Still, both share many similarities, through their queer origins, the dramatic flair, and, most of all, the dramatic arm movements, but their respective executions are different. Both share the same origin in fighting gestures. The hand movements found in voguing, especially in Old Way, bear strong influences from battle, combat and martial arts. You discover movements that create space for me, that push other persons out of the way and with which I defend myself. This is all about claiming and defending space, physically and symbolically. This fierce moment, this battle aspect, is a firm component in voguing – as well as in waacking, whereas waacking displays more moments of duets than voguing.
And it really holds true for almost all Black, diasporic or club forms of dance: They all have an inherent fight. Popping, hip-hop, krump, voguing or waacking – they all share this aggressive component, this symbolic resolution of conflict via the body.

How did you arrive at voguing and ballroom?

 That was here at tanzhaus, in Studio 2, in 2008. Takao Baba, back then, was the first one to really establish voguing, alongside waacking, as a category at the Funkin’ Styles street dance festival. I myself was a very classically minded house and hip-hop dancer back then and attended Takao’s classes because of him. He then told us,” I invited someone from New York, Archie Burnett.” And he recommended attending his workshop. I remember watching YouTube clips the night before, but I must confess that I did not get it at all. This was back in 2008, so early days on YouTube. I had no context, no idea, why the people danced the way they danced, why they wore costumes, why they performed simultaneously, it was completely new to me. Yet I thought: No matter. What have I got to lose? So, I went. And this first workshop with Archie was truly life changing.
I remember being in a very bad mood that day, for whatever reason, and that completely turned around during the class. I felt transformed. The music, the energy, the attitude, I was absolutely transfixed. From then on, I tried to go to every workshop I could find. I travelled, made contact, watched live battles, as well as everything on YouTube. But most of all, the recurring tanzhaus nrw events made a lasting impact on me. Funkin’ Styles returned every year, and as soon as it was announced, I booked every available workshop. I wanted to understand everything, the movements, the energy, the underlying culture. Still, it took me another two or three years to fully grasp ballroom culture, meaning the context from which voguing emerged.
Voguing may be the pop cultural phenomenon everyone latches on to, yet it truly is only a small part within ballroom. To really understand voguing, also from a dancer’s perspectives, one needs to understand ballroom in all its complexity, and even more so respect and show solidarity to the lived realities of the Black, brown, trans* and queer people who created it.

The interview was conducted by Philipp Schaus, dramaturge at tanzhaus nrw.