OKWUI OKPOKWASILI | BRONX GOTHIC

Intimacies under construction

What do we need to survive? To be heard? To be seen? Since the creation of "Bronx Gothic" in 2014, U.S. dancer and choreographer Okwui Okpokwasili has taken this mythical piece to stages on several continents. In a powerful gesture of sisterhood, she has now handed it over Wanjiru Kamuyu, who gives a new body to this solo about the entanglement of violence and desire in the life of a prepubescent black girl in the Bronx.

Part dance, part theatre and part installation, the work is based on a raw exchange of letters, in which the intimacy of two young black girls develops in the shadows. With their troubling desires, first-time experiences and aggressions, they yearn to be visible to each other in a world that renders them invisible. "Bronx Gothic" is an embodiment of empathy; a razor-sharp performance that epitomizes an anti-racist, decolonial and feminist stance as it tells a singular human story.