Hangxiety
Choreography Preformance
50 min, Duet, Tanzfaktur-production, Cologne, 2019
"You can smell fear! You can sense it! When one of you in this room is afraid at this moment, the same unconscious process takes place in all the others: the amygdala, your almond brain, is activated. It fires messengers through your body. Your pulse rate increases. Breathing becomes shallower. Your muscles harden. Your concentration improves. Your reflexes speed up. And I'll tell you this. This is how we know who we are. That's the smell of the pack. It's no coincidence you're sitting here right now. This is a ritual that has been going on since the beginning of mankind. The frightened ones are gathering. They gather... to rise above themselves. To become greater than anyone else out there. To be better than everyone else out there ! To become more successful than everyone else out there! So let's get started!!! LET ́S TAKE IT!!! TO THE NEXT LEVEL!!!" (a text from Hangxiety, written by: Soufian Zoghlami)
Few topics are so rarely discussed than fear. It remains taboo to say, "I'm afraid." The piece, “Hangxiety”, deals with this omnipresent feeling. It explores the physical experience of fear, one so elemental that it makes us become animals again, and with words it traces the thoughts that arise from that fear. Using images, “Hangxiety” represents the unknown, the alien, as a "distant other", as a fleeting impression of a temporary possibility. “Hangxiety” is framed by a text that is written in the form of a fear- seminar, a seminar about accepting and even embracing one’s fear. The dancers are half-humans half-videogame-characters, blinded by their fear. They are in an unknown place, afraid of everything, especially of each other - but it is still better to be afraid together than alone…
In “Hangxiety”, alongwith my colleague, Kelvin Kilonzo, I worked with the idea of being blinded by the fear of the unknown. Our task was to overcome our physical anxiety, a sense which was heightened by the use of contact lenses which limited our vision, allowing us to perceive only the outlines of the space and our bodies. We studied various fighting techniques as well in order to gain strength.
