like this, like that.... like this, like that ...
like this, like that.... like this, like that ...like this, like that.... like this, like that ...like this, like that.... like this, like that ...
Photo credit: Sebastian Verdon
PHASE 1:
Iron Chicken
How can postmodern movement practices be re-imagined through diasporic Nigerian perspectives when placed within, and simultaneously outside of, Western choreographic frameworks, including American postmodern dance lineages and their performative expectations? What becomes of postmodern dance when it is practiced not as an aesthetic system of the West, but as diasporic ritual, transmission, and lived cosmology?
LIKE THIS LIKE THAT is an ongoing choreographic and sonic research project by New Kyd intensified by diasporic convergence, postmodern dance history and sonic experimentation. The research process investigates repetition, opulence and embodied knowledge within diasporic movement practices, situating 'the diaspora' as both an archive and untethered pressure chamber of Black and migrant movement histories.
Rather than treating postmodern dance as a fixed lineage, the project reorients it through Yoruba-derived embodied knowledge systems, intuitive movement vocabularies, and somatic practices of voice, memory, and spirit. In dialogue with the dense dance history legacies to contemporary experimental Black and queer choreographies; the research asks how “pedestrian movement” shifts when reframed through diasporic perception rather than minimalist reduction.
Iron chicken @ Abbatiale Bellelay
On 16 August 2026, Gil Pellaton’s exhibition Galop gallop galopp welcomes visitors for one final day.
Guest curator Selma Meuli presents a performance programme in two acts. The programme embodies and revisits central motives of the exhibition such as its rhythmic, aural and political dimensions.
In Iron Chicken, New Kyd investigates walking, repetition, meditation, Òrìṣà dance vocabularies, and transformation. Emerging from the ordinary domestic act of emptying a laundry basket and confronting a pile of clean clothing, the performance treats everyday garments as materials for bodily transformation. The piece invokes Ògún, the Yorùbá deity of iron, associated with labour and the machete that cuts pathways through dense terrain. Accompanied by a musical composition by Julius Eastman, the performance explores states of vulnerability and metamorphosis.
video credit:
Nathalie Berger
instagram: @nathbergerfilms