Out of the Box
A piece of dance history by Niels Robitzky aka Storm & Christian Zacharas aka Robozee.
Out of the Box was premiered on December 8, 2022 at Kunstquartier Bethanien as part of Archivkompliz*innen – Tanzarchive in Bewegung.
The piece does not intend to recount history in chronological order, rather, it is an attempt at creating a living and danced archive of urban dance. “Everywhere, for everyone and at any time” can stand as a credo for this very diverse dance genre, which has long since inscribed itself into cultural and political memory, even if the history of urban dance is told rather marginally. Niels Robitzky, alias Storm, has since 1983 been a firm advocate for hip-hop and funk dance styles and is one of the leading European dance pioneers in this field.
Based on his own dance background, Storm looks at the history of urban dance in Europe: starting with its origins in the resistance among Black communities in the USA, its violent colonial history and its defining concept of community, through to today’s extensive networks across continents and dance styles. Together with urban dance artist Christian Robozee Zacharas, Storm invites the audience to join a lottery in which the wheel of stories is spun and the personal dance history of the two artists is brought to the stage in unpredictable ways and leaps in time: A rhizome of memories, entanglements and dance moves.