“When two hands touch, there is a sensuality of the flesh, an exchange of warmth, a feeling of pressure, of presence, a proximity of otherness that brings the other nearly as close as oneself.1 Perhaps closer. And if the two hands belong to one person, might this not enliven an uncanny sense of the otherness of the self, a literal holding oneself at a distance in the sensation of contact, the greeting of the stranger within? So much happens in a touch: an infinity of others—other beings, other spaces, other times—are aroused.”
Karen Barad

“Down to Earth” is a whirling dance of constructed identities shaped by increasingly complex constellations that go beyond the universal social interrogation of “where are you from?” and “what do you do?”. Existing examples of socially coded dance, music and cultural artifacts collide until alien identities are born and shattered on stage, drawing on the human body as a projection canvas. What agency do we really have in rupturing our identities? Kieron Jina (South Africa) and Marc Philipp Gabriel (Germany) work together since 2013. For “Down to Earth” Yogin Sullaphen (South African) joins as a collaborator to assist in musical composition.

Marc Philipp Gabriel is a Berlin based performance artist working between voice, installation, video and architecture from the perspective of dance and movement.
He has been in close artistic collaboration with Burkhard Körner, Helena Botto and Liselotte Singer. Together with BlingBlingRecycling Marc has instigated the weekly performance practice Monday FEAST at various performance venues in Berlin and is member of the Breakfast Club collective. He received the danceWEB scholarship 2013 at ImPulsTanz Vienna and graduated from the BA dance, context and choreography at HZT Berlin in summer 2015. His solo AJIMA (2013) for Maija Karhunen has travelled to festivals in Cyprus, Norway, Scotland and Switzerland.
marcphilippgabriel.com

Kieron Jina is one of South Africa’s controversial choreographers and multidisciplinary artists, redefining both forms of the art in the country through his innovation within the field. Awarded one of the Mail and Guardian’s top 200 Young South Africans in 2012, Kieron Jina is not only a performance artists but also an international choreographer, dancer, teacher, facilitator, director, fashion designer/model, cinematographer and video editor. Jina was also selected as a DanceWeb scholar for 2013 at the ImPulseTanz Festival in Vienna, Austria. In 2014 Jina completed artistic residencies that lead to collaborative performance creations in the following countries Brazil, Berlin, France, Reunion Island and South Korea. In 2015 he was the UJ Arts and Culture associate choreographer and currently is City Varsity’s movement studies lecturer. Jina was also a featured performing artist at the FNB JoburgArtFair 2015 and premiered a new creation entitled “Exotic”. In 2016 he co-created a new dance performance in entitled “Shave that Gummi” and toured Berlin presenting “Ubu Never Loved Us” at the Berliner Festspiele for the foreign affairs programme. He is also the curator of Queer Art Night South Africa. In 2017, he is creator of two new performance works entitled DOWN TO EARTH and Pink Dollar.
kieronjina.com