WINDY DAYS + THE IMMIGRANT

August 2 2026   7.30 PM 
Hošek Contemporary
Märkisches Ufer 1z
10179 Berlin

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Door                                                     7       pm

Prelude                                               7.30 pm THE IMMIGRANT                                          

Performance                                     8 pm
WINDY DAYS                                                          



The evening begins with Charlie Chaplin’s The Immigrant (1917), accompanied by a live score performed by pianist Omer Gottesfeld, followed by the dance performance Windy Days.





Program NoteThe inspiration for Windy Days begins in the obscure moments when oppression is revealed within the storms of history, like a breath of wind dissolving what blocks our view and revealing unvoiced or unseen individual stories. The work commemorates those who disappeared, invoking historical dances of emancipation and remembrance such as Cueca Sola on Plaza de Mayo.

Windy Days unfolds in seven fragments, drawing on folk elements, oscillating between chaos and order, each initiated with a game rule. Like passing days, these fragments contain the moments when a social structure emerges and then fails, as is inevitable with time. Does chaos emancipate us from order, or vice versa?

At Hošek Contemporary, a boat floating on the Spree, the river gives tangible presence to the wind and the space we share, as disembodied voices from far away and long before are brought forth by the performers in an act of remembering.

After all, we are all human in the hurricane.



concept and direction Cecilia Xuetong Feng
movement research alexz, Cecilia Xuetong Feng
performance alexz, Chelsea Reichert, Luca Schüssler
sound composition and live music Marta-Liisa Talvet
costume design Ama Tomberli
lighting design Mari Hakopyan

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Kristóf Siklósi generously contributed to the initial research.
We would like to thank Petr from Hošek Contemporary, Szerafina from NYT Art Space, Marcela from Lake Studios, Youjiao from Galerie Olymp, KlangZeitOrt, and all the warm hearts who accompanied, inspired, and supported the process.


Preview
Tanzraumberlin Magazin




work-in-progress impressions
“Your performance really captivated/mesmerized/tranced me from beginning to end. The play with disconnection, connection, symbiosis, and individuation fascinated and touched me. And the music and stepping sounds pulled me deeper into the world you created on stage. I would have liked the end to develop further… That is a strong image for me. Together with you seeming somehow lost on stage without your obvious connection from before.”


notes from the making

On a windy day in late winter, the sun set early and the sky was an infinite grey — a common memory shared by those who have lived through winters in Berlin. Crossing the street, sand must have blurred my eyes. For a moment, we all seemed to be the same particles on earth, despite our origins, languages, cultures, and everything else that differentiates one from another. I called Alexz on the phone and tried to speak, yet our voices were blown away by the wind.

We looked back into history and realized that we were not alone. It was like turning the pages of a book of time and finding similar stories repeated within it. There was a long breath of relief, and a sigh, in knowing that we are part of a cycle that has been going on for centuries.

We are not alone, because those who are absent dwell in space as much as we do. In the river of time, we follow them into stories that have long been silenced beneath the loud storms of the past. They draw us into a gap, apart from the world to which we are accustomed, and allow us to see again.

The remedy seems to lie within ourselves, as the natural force of reciprocity always takes over. Love illuminates dark places and gives us the courage to explore the roots of oppression with rigor, because we know that there is a way back.

As we listen closely to our inner voices, the ways in which we relate to one another seem to emerge from maternal memory and extend towards family, a childhood friend, a first love, a neighbor, or the person sitting in the next chair. These relationships expand naturally through time and space. Through the gaze of this singular principle, perhaps we can begin to understand the complex relationships between individuals in the world. The rehearsals for a dance therefore become rehearsals for relationality.

We would like to dance in the winds with you.

We would like to share what has sheltered our minds over the past eighteen months — a process that has allowed us to confront the violence happening in the world while continuing to hope and to love even more — because, in the end, we are all just human beings floating together on a boat on the river.

We are aware of the roughness of the piece. It was made with a commitment to rigor and consistency, yet under precarious conditions. Still, we hope that even a whisper might console the past and soften our hearts.


fictional winds

Wind is a fiction that lies in the perception of the viewers within a still space. It renders the space through a different gaze, tapping into the imagination of the mind. In the wind, the absent bodies in the space become visible, whispering vanished voices from the past, buried beneath the storms of history. They remind us of stories that have fallen into the liminal spaces of oblivion, and of the journeys they have made, so that the tragedies of humanity might not be repeated.

We worked meticulously with the notion of absence. We dance the scores of a duet as a solo with an absent partner; we dance the scores of folk dances in a circle with absent participants. Over time, we begin to see and perceive figures from the past on stage. All of a sudden, the past presences are everywhere.

The beauty and melancholy of these presences dwell in their fragile temporality. The fact that they live only for the duration of the piece renders them vulnerable, like shining flickers in deep water. Thankfully, voices echo somewhat longer in space than the shadows of movements, breathing life into the air and imbuing it with invisible shapes.

Atmospheres evoke ancient and recent memories of spaces within individual minds: deserts, oceans, metropolises, subways, theaters, one’s own rooms, and, of course, other dances. Where shall we meet in our own imaginations?

this is still a temporal site of