MK x DANCE #1 “Puff”

In collaboration with the International DANCE Festival Munich, MKxDANCE is presenting a series of dance performances at Werk*raum. The focus is on smaller-scale formats, primarily solos and duets, complemented by artist talks and workshops that allow audiences to experience dancing bodies in a variety of ways—as sites of present forces, political attributions, and economic attempts at appropriation, oscillating between freedom and discipline, between virtuosity and vulnerability.

#1 Alice Ripoll – “Puff”

“Puff” is a highly compelling solo that explores the idea of disguise as a vehicle for memory—as a form that carries within it the hidden cultures, traditions, and forms of knowledge of the African diaspora. On stage stands the Brazilian dancer Hiltinho Fantástico alone, and yet the space seems populated: by gestures, rhythms, traces. His movement language draws on Passinho, an urban dance style from the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, and blends with elements of samba and capoeira. This gives rise to shifts—the body appears both familiar and otherworldly, oscillating between presence and withdrawal, between virtuosity and letting go. The sound emerges from the body itself: breath, footsteps, and the beating of the chest coalesce into a musical structure of their own. Under the choreographic direction of Alice Ripoll, “Puff” becomes a fleeting image—like a breath that vanishes the moment it appears. And that is precisely where its power lies: as a reminder that cultural heritage transforms and lives on, even where it seems to be disappearing, barely visible.

A discussion with the artists will follow the 30-minute performance.