Tiran Willemse (ZA, 1987)
Residency period: January-March 2024
During my time at La Becque I started building an archive of African and indigenous dances. Looking into different possibilities an archive of dances can be alive within an institution and how these dances can exist within my personal choreographic history.
I’ve always gravitated towards art that uses the body because I have a very specific relationship to my body as an instrument. Interested in the way the body depends on a kind of resistance breaking down in order to grow. The limits of what the stakes are in one’s body. I’m very curious what the body does when the mind let go, In a state of transcendence. The idea of how the body can speak for itself and tell you things without you directing it. Space location is very important to me and usually the starting point. There is a type of soul in all spaces and I’m curious of that and how to connect to that to lead me and hopefully encounter things. — Tiran Willemse
Tiran Willemse is a dancer, choreographer from South Africa based in Zurich. His performance based practice is rooted in a careful attention to space, imagination, gesture, and sound, focusing on how they relate to the ways in which constructions of race, gender and memory are performed, communicated and challenged. Willemse won the Swiss Performance Art Award 2023 and is a resident artist at Gessnerallee in Zurich while his work continues touring internationally.
Tiran Willemse, La Becque, photo Matthieu Croizier