Categoreez

Reservations are closed. Members who have already registered can collect their free ticket at the box office at KVS on the day of the event.

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Note: CST is required for this event.

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Is it dance? A catwalk show? A party? Maybe it’s contemporary dance, hip-hop, vogueing? Don’t worry about pigeon-holes, this is Categoreez, a new piece in which dancer-choreographer Yassin Mraftibi creates a space where (sub)cultures and codes can mix, inspired by unstoppable evolutions in society and nature.

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Categoreez is inspired by Mraftibi’s fascination for vogueing, a form that comes from the ballroom scene. He’s intrigued by its parallels with hip-hop: both are underground cultures that grew out of similar contexts in New York around the same time. Both were an artistic means for oppressed minorities to stand up against the system and express themselves, yet they followed separate paths and hardly cross-fertilise at all. Hip-hop is a traditionally masculine culture; vogueing began in the African American Latinx LGBTQ+ community as a way of expressing different categories of masculinity and femininity. Mraftibi and the dancers he works with see it as natural to knock down some of the barriers between the two. And the symbolic reconciliation of catwalk and cypher – two distinct forms flowing from particular conditions – offers the audience an opportunity to express themselves without being fearful of another’s gaze.