In his performance "a liminal jaunt: an excursion across space and through time, nothing more and nothing less", Djibril Sall drops pretenses of perfection and of polish in a journey through the space of SAVVY Contemporary. Tapping into a language of (black/african/f*g/however you perceive him) improvisation, he explores what it is to just, receive. And reciprocate.

VENUE: 
TANZ IM AUGUST
TANZNACHT

PREMIERE: 
AUGUST 12, 2023

INVITED BY: 
RICARDO CARMONA AND
JULY WEBER

PERFORMANCE:
DJIBRIL SALL

STYLING:
DJIBRIL SALL AND NICO NAVARRO-RUEDA

PHOTOGRAPHY & DOCUMENTATION:
NAIMA MALEIKA | Tanz im August 2023
BICKMANN & KOLDE GbR

LENGTH:
10 MINUTES
35 MINUTES

Senegalese choreographer Djibril Sall will perform a summoning, offering his body up for possession by the Simb, in a performance that explores the compounding relationship between climate change and hypercapitalism and the resulting tension between an increasingly endangered cultural institution. In this performance, Djibril engages with tropes of the savage, the cannibal, the animist, and the witch doctor in a confrontational subversion of colonial pedagogy.

Conceived as a part of Sorour’s Darabi 6 hour performance saga From Throat Till Dawn, Djibril Sall’s liminal rehab is a treatise on death, dying, and how to live. Pulling from his own personal philosophy informed by his Senegalese upbringing, Judeo-Christian theology, the queer utopic work of José Esteban Munoz, and his own insights into mortality—including but not limited to experiences gained through his battles with adolescent cancer, suicide, and the death of close friends—he offers his audience a new and hopefully more liberating way to approaching living.

Named after Sonia Sanchez’s collection of haikus, Morning Haiku, this evening length performance leans heavily on the haiku as inspiration for its score. The strictness and simplicity of the poetic form provides the choreographic tools used to construct the piece—diligent and focused repetition of a phrase as if in meditation. Everything is stripped to its simplest form and there the naked essence of a subject can be experienced deeply, whether that be the inexplicable grief of changing seasons; the transformational momentum of death; or the subtle beauty of an afternoon sunbeam filtering through a semi-transparent curtain.

Djibril was asked to choreograph for and perform in Songs for Captured Voices by Thea Reifler, Phila Bergmann, and Laure Heindl. This piece sought to unearth the names of those buried by (post) colonial European conquest. Through a libretto written by Gucci Chunk and sung by Elaine Mitchener, Sall engaged with the violence of forgotten names—refugees, prisoners of war—relegated to dusty archives by acting as a medium for their voices. Through this, Djibril asked how could he—as someone who is in relation to this complex web of geopolitics— be in conversation with this trauma?