Born to Exist: Towards Bridging or Intensifying the Difference?
November 20, 2022
Born to Exist: The Women I Know is the last part of a trilogy Joseph Toonga created to pay tribute to the lives of women of Color. Toonga weaves his personal memories with the community’s experiences to create a one-hour dance performance that depicts and celebrates Black women’s struggles. Born to Exist was presented in the 2022 edition of the “What You See Festival” in Utrecht, the Netherlands – a festival about gender and identity whose special theme for that festival edition was the use of the body as a protest instrument to reclaim space in the world. As such, the particular performance focuses on the corporeal dimension of living, experiencing, connecting, suffering, responding. Coming from Greece and studying in the Netherlands – two white, European, developed countries – my response to this performance is inevitably colored by my heritage, a coloring which I deliberately acknowledge both in my thinking patterns and in my review, and a coloring which I attempt to question at the same time.
Toonga, Joseph. Born to Exist: The Women I Know,
performed by Paris Crossley, Amanda de Souza and Aisha Webber, Theater Kikker, Utrecht, 2022,
photo by Karin Jonkers, Theater Kikker, whatyouseefestival.nl/events/born-to-exist-the-women-i-know-joseph-toonga/
The performance begins with one of the three dancers standing in the center of the stage with her back towards the audience and a spotlight on her. Initially with no music, her body is progressively activated making the strength and consciousness behind every movement evident; soon enough these movements intersect and compose a hip-hop-like dance that takes over the whole performance. At times as if she is punching some invisible enemy in the air, while at others as if she surrenders to her vulnerability, the dancer’s sweated body stands out amidst the foggy, dim-lit atmosphere, giving voice to her exasperation and devastation. After a while, the other two dancers join her, forming a triad with ambivalent roles: sometimes they dance as a united body, and later their moves seem to have a dialogue and respond to one another. Their movements re-enact a) the self-protecting moves of the victim, b) the aggressive, ferocious moves of the perpetrator towards the victim, c) a combination of the two, or d) a blurring of the binary of victim-perpetrator. In this way, the borders between the two parties blur and highlight the chaos, anguish, and distress women of Color experience. This suffocating physical state, which is not limited to the dancers but passes onto the spectators as well, is occasionally accompanied by direct address to the audience. ”See me. See [pause] ME. Why can’t you see me?,” the dancers say. Even though the literal meaning of these phrasings seems to not really matter – as one of the dancers speaks in her native language, Portuguese – the attitude of these articulations engage the spectator in an awkward manner one would characterize more as opposing rather as allying. Therefore, the audience seems to be perceived as a representation of the victimizer/colonizer – an impression maybe intentionally conveyed given the Dutch context they are performing in and its association with colonial history.
Toonga, Joseph. Born to Exist: The Women I Know,
performed by Paris Crossley, Amanda de Souza and Aisha Webber, UK, 2022,
photo by Jan McNulty, BalletcoForum, balletcoforum.com/topic/25769-press-release-jospeh-toonga-new-work-born-to-exist-to-tour-the-uk-2022-and-2023/
In the audience discussion after the performance, one spectator, who was of Color as well, shared their feeling: they did not want the performance to have ended; they could see themselves being empowered throughout. That was an interesting moment because I had the exact opposite sense: I would rather it had ended long ago. The second half of the performance was interrupted by a number of long pauses, pauses that one could say were long enough to indicate the end of the performance. What I find problematic though is that every bit that followed each pause did not add any value to the main part of the performance; three dancers, who are building a highly physical, intimate, yet ambiguous relationship, are united against the ‘enemy.’ But, why do I need to watch the same concept in pieces multiple times? In other words, it would have been a more concise and engaging performance had it been condensed. Nevertheless, my co-spectator’s feedback was a fruitful one in the sense that it made me wonder how empowerment was achieved for them and not for me. So, I then reconsidered the repetitions of the acts as a way to emphasize Black women’s suffering and to, in turn, spread their discomfort to the audience. Was this effect intentional to emphasize the eternally unbridged gap Black people experience in comparison to the White? Because I believe that this gap has been significantly minimized throughout the years and I would rather be exposed to this minimization as an act of empowerment for all.
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Toonga, Joseph. Born To Exist: The Women I Know. What You See Festival. The Netherlands, 18 Nov. 2022.
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