The sea is a vast collective mirror. A thousand rivers, streams, and trickles pour into it. They carve their ways dancing, circumvent stones, undermine structures. Water is dammed until it surges over obstacles or tears down barriers. Even the trickle carries something unstoppable. We see ourselves in it, liquefied. Water is the oldest of futuristic mirrors.

In Caminhos das Águas – Unstoppable Flow, the dancer and choreographer, Fernanda Costa, seeks new self-determined images for Black women White binary thinking divides the world into opposites, with inherent opposing values. The dominant order is corrective and derogatory, until self-images are worthless. Together with three Black dancers, the choreographer works on liquefying categories, movements, reflections. And on a changed relationship between inside and outside. After all, we are water, predominantly at least. Perhaps the body is a state of aggregation like ice and steam and like them a threat to static structures.

Caminhos das Águas – Unstoppable Flow is part of the dance series Wie ich werde, wie ich sein will (How I become, who I want to be) at the Ballhaus Naunynstraße, where three Black choreographers inquire about the important inspirations, solidarities, and connections for the strengthening of self-determined Black femininities*. It is Fernanda Costa’s choreographic debut at the Ballhaus Naunynstraße.