B4 summer

As part of an ultra-desirable process of commitment to a global struggle, B4 summer lets out a cry. A cry of emotional labour, faced with the infinite question of commitment. How do you face up to the complexity of this 100% material? How do you allow yourself to be overwhelmed by this chaos without backing down? How do you deal honestly with the vulnerability and sense of powerlessness into which these questions can plunge you? How do you assess the authenticity or legitimacy of your commitment? Mercedes Dassy uses her body as a weapon, as a tool, as an obstacle, as a space for exploration and as a subject-object, to try to articulate this cry.

Influenced by a wide range of aesthetic and artistic sources (pop culture, music, post-internet art, etc.), Brussels-based choreographer and dancer Mercedes Dassy presents B4 summer as the second part of a cycle of performances. In i-clit, her previous work, she explored a new wave of ultra-connected and ultra-sexed feminism, questioning its ambivalent power of emancipation and oppression. The dancer’s new work is a continuation of her quest, drawing on real, symbolic and fictional representatives to probe our (in)ability to act and to engage.

“Changing the world. An idea, a project, organisations, for a while there was even talk of victory. History seemed pregnant with truth. We came later, children of disillusionment and bad dreams. The overthrow of capitalism had been aborted, its very desire had entered a phase of symbolic disintegration. Words were too worn out, if they weren’t too wise. So they taught us to shout”.
The precarious springtime of peoples, Maria Kakkogianni.