2025 Uferstudios, Berlin, Germany
TOUGHGUY is a duet exploring extreme competition within the creative self. Two male-presenting dancers exist as pieces of the overarching psyche of a woman, present as the environment itself. There is a palpable repression of her divine feminine, reinforced by her upbringing and hardcore capitalist North American structures that claims there is no time for rest. Rewarded for burnout, she subconsciously perceives the world as her enemy and by association: her own intuitive needs as her enemy.
In the context of performing arts spaces, women are often pitted against each other. What should be liberating spaces and projects too easily morph into hardened, volatile experiences. The reasoning behind casting two male-presenting dancers is to blur visible gender lines and work from a place of representing an energetic imbalance in a creative operating in a post-modern world.
Captured in collaboration with Jen Sintra | Dancers: Ginjo Sakai, Yuki Takahashi | Music: Kaan Bulak, Simon Höfele