In sports, the Black athlete is often mythologised: supernatural speed, exceptional strength, genetics as magic. And yet, in public spaces, a Black person running is met with suspicion, fear or anger. The choreographer Joana Tischkau’s new piece Runnin’, which premiered at Berlin’s prestigious performance stage HAU, last week, opens that tension and holds it for us to see.
The work builds itself in the everyday: four performers move in circles across an empty stage. It brings the so-called “pedestrian movement” of postmodern dance – walking, standing, sitting – the sort of movement considered neutral, almost invisible, into collision with the Black body. When a racialised person simply moves, simply breathes in our shared streets, the piece seems to ask, is that ever neutral?
