Production Details / Press Releases
Pink people wanna know if other pink people like hip-hop
how can it still be hip-hop?
That’s like asking, if black people like
Dirty Harry is he still Clint Eastwood?
What is Hip Hop?
Greg Tate
It was 2002 the rapper Cam’ron appeared in his music video Hey Ma in a pink bandana tied under a pink Baseball Hat, dressed in a velour tracksuit. Otherwise saturated with performative hyper-masculinity, the US Rap World was now soft, furry and pink. This trend quickly reached the catwalks of European metropolises. African-American rappers, who perfectly embodied the racist projections of heterosexuality, hyper-masculinity and aggressiveness, had proven that the formerly feminine gendered color could not harm their image. BEING PINK AIN’T EASY takes this historical moment as it’s starting point. It’s a choreographic investigation making the fragility and power mechanisms visible that underlie social constructions of race and gender. The work is a confrontation with the insatiable white desire for Black forms of expression. In addition to their music, artists provide us with their physicalities as usable concepts for the construction of one’s own identity. The capitalist logic of consumption turns black aesthetics into a performative mask available to everyone. In Everything but the Burden – What white People are taking from Black Culture (2003), Greg Tate also describes Hip Hop as the aesthetic by-product of the American dream machine, our culture of consumption, commodification and subliminal seduction. Tate further notes that the figure of White N*, Wigga or Wangsta thus stands in a long tradition with US-American artists of the avantgarde of the 20s and 30s. It’s most precise expression is embodied by the character Eminem. BEING PINK AIN’T EASY refers to skin color as a construction that has set whiteness as it’s most powerful symbol which, by not being named as such, appears as supposedly neutral. The stage character, the White N*, experiences a hyper-marking in the piece: not being able to reject his pink nature, he is confronted with the hard to bear fact of being a profiteer of the white matrix. BEING PINK AIN’T EASY searches for the ambiguities that are interwoven between defensive mechanisms like “white fragility” (Robin DiAngelo) and forms of cultural appropriation.
[Source: play bill]
TFB Nr. 1378
Cast & Credits
CHOREOGRAPHY: Joana Tischkau
PERFORMANCE: Rudi Natterer
SOUND DESIGN: Frieder Blume
DRAMATURGY AND ARTISTIC ASSISTANCE: Nuray Demir, Elisabeth Hampe
COSTUME: Nadine Bakota
STAGE: Inga Danysz
LIGHT: Juri Rendler
PRODUCTION MANAGEMENT: Lisa Gehring
A production by Joana Tischkau in co-production with SOPHIENSÆLE, Münchner Kammerspiele and Künstlerhaus Mousonturm as part of the Tanzplattform Rhein-Main. The Tanzplattform Rhein-Main, a project of Künstlerhaus Mousonturm and the Hessisches Staatsballett is made possible by the Kulturfonds Frankfurt RheinMain and supported by the Kulturamt der Stadt Frankfurt am Main, the The Hessen State Ministry for Higher Education, Research and the Arts and the Stiftungsallianz [Aventis Foundation, BHF BANK Stiftung, Crespo Foundation, Dr. Marschner-Stiftung, Stiftung Polytechnische Gesellschaft Frankfurt am Main]. Supported by the Cultural Office of the City of Frankfurt. Supported by the NATIONALE PERFORMANCE NETZ Koproduktionsförderung Tanz, supported by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.
Sophiensæle
Video Documentation
The video documentation is produced on behalf of the Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion. The purpose of this contract is to document productions in the field of contemporary dance in Berlin. The master recordings are archived by the University Library of the Berlin University of Arts. Copies of the recordings on DVD are available for viewing exclusively in the reference collections of the following archives (at media desks in these institutions):
University Library of the Berlin University of Arts
Mediathek für Tanz und Theater des Internationalen Theaterinstituts / Mime Centrum Berlin
Inter-University Centre for Dance Berlin (HZT)