Tümay Kılınçel – WE ♥ 2 RAQS

“we ♥ 2 raqs” is a choreographic performance group work that deals with the dominant images and techniques of the so-called “belly dance” or “oriental dance”. The dance technique of raqs is used to negotiate and deconstruct orientalist and colonial image structures.

After the solo work “Dansöz”, dancer and choreographer Tümay Kılınçel and dramaturg Berna Kurt continue their collaboration on raqs dance, this time working with various perspectives of the dancers.

Together with five very different dance performers from the dance genres of so-called classical oriental dance, so-called tribal fusion and american tribal style, fusion, voguing, baladi and contemporary dance, a collective raqs body is to be created. With the impressive and strong performers Dina Abdelhafez, The Darvish, Lia Pavlidis, Suzan Demircan, Marilyn Nova White, the theatre be shaking with a contemporary raqs dance mix.

The live band trio plays, sings and drums the music for raqs and other sounds on stage. The trio are: Kanun player Dima Dawood, percussionist Sultan Kara, musical director, music producer and vocalist Leila Moon. In the “we ♥ 2 raqs” they come together as a live band trio for the first time.

With music, movement and images, the aim is to create an performance that recontextualizes raqs as a feminist, self-empowering practice and celebrates different femme identities on the theatre stage. “we ♥ 2 raqs” aims to detoxify the so-called “belly dance” or “oriental dance” and make it visible the “raqs” as an art form by tickling audience minds and setting them in motion.

A production Tümay Kılınçel in co-production with HAU – Hebbel am Ufer Berlin,  Künstlerhaus Mousonturm within the framework Tanzplattform Rhein-Main, Forum Freies Theater Düsseldorf and Kaserne Basel.
With the kind support of the Senate Department for Culture and Europe; the Kunststiftung NRW; the NATIONALEN PERFORMANCE NETZ Koproduktionsförderung Tanz,  supported by the Beauftragten der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien; the Ministerium für Kultur und Wissenschaft des Landes NRW; the NRW Landesbüro Freie Darstellende Künste; the Stadt Frankfurt am Main – Dezernat für Kultur und Wissenschaft; the Hessisches Ministerium für Wissenschaft und Kunst; the Kulturamt der Landeshauptstadt Düsseldorf and the Fachausschuss Tanz & Theater BS/BL.