Can a history full of bad faith and gaps be left to the past? Can history die? Since history is fallible, and often determined by the victors, what might emerge when it is laid to rest?
In Still Not Still, choreographer and dancer Ligia Lewis deals with the heavy history of black and non-Western communities. The exclusion of these groups in the past is covered in a dance full of dark humor and surrealist imagery. Seven performers play in a world at a standstill, in which the fantasy of historical progress is critically looked at. Lewis reflects on the past and presence of non-white and non-western heroes in the global narrative still led by the European point of view.
She highlights the shameful straight lines from the hidden scandal of the colonial past, to the contemporary scandal of everyday reality disclosed by the BLM movement. She confronts the audience with our illusions about a „post-class” and „post-race” contemporary society. Lewis speaks straight from the middle of the so-called progressive West, and her diagnosis is directed straight onto the people around her, exposing everyday hypocrisy, and knocking us out from our liberal comfort.
“By invoking the world of the dead and reintegrating it into our present, Lewis creates a fictional-performative alternative world, which defies discrimination and degradation. It is at once a wild celebration, a ritual, and a melancholic lament” – Andrej Mirčev, tanzschreiber.de
“The dancers seem imprisoned in history which keeps repeating itself, which cannot be overcome. It troubles, it chafes, it screams. This is where Still Not Still steals your breath.” – Iris Spanbroek, de Theaterkrant
At SPRING 2023, Ligia Lewis presents not one, but two works. A Plot / A Scandal plays after Still Not Still, on the 26th and 27th of May. Ligia will also participate in the Topic Talk black body – white gaze.