Melodrama Suits Her

With the dance performance “Melodrama Suits Her – A revenge evening” at the HAU in Berlin, the dancer and choreographer Tümay Kılınçel takes a stand against the “male gaze”, the objectifying, sexualised view of women, thereby challenging the still prevalent cinematic depiction of women as weak, vulnerable, hysterical and melodramatic.

The skewed portrayals of women, which have manifested themselves through the power of the patriarchy, is revisited on stage. The artistic team of “Melodrama Suits Her – A revenge evening” explores various physical acting methods and then combines them with contemporary dance techniques and the LBGTQI+ dance style “Waacking”. The team also draws on film material based on Yeşilçam movies of the Turkish mainstream, Mexican telenovelas, popular German movies and Hollywood classics. In connection with these, the project team artistically examines the relationships between feminism, decolonialisation and capitalist criticism.

Mobility represents one of the biggest environmental challenges for the project. In response, the team travels only by train within Germany, and international participants travel only from abroad for the large block of rehearsals and performances. Any rehearsals scheduled before that were conducted via “long-distance dramaturgy”, i.e. with stage directions transmitted digitally. All costumes were be purchased second-hand or borrowed in order to lower resource consumption as much as possible.