It’s not what you think, allow me to clarify
Performance Dance Theatre & Performance
“It’s not what you think, allow me to clarify“ is a dance piece that opens a dialogue on resettlement, flight, and migration – especially for people from developing countries and People of Colour in times of tougher immigration policies. The piece directs the gaze unto “the other half of our reality” – towards people from destroyed nations that recover from colonial unrest and corrupt governments, carrying a seed for potential, resources, and new beginnings.
Yasmine Calasse resolutely deals with the consequences of colonialism, while she and her team take a differentiated perspective on the topic of migration, exposing stereotypes, scrutinising the logic behind “White Saviourism”.
cast
Concept & artistic direction, choreography: Yasmine Calasse
Dance: Lucas Lopes Pereira, Lucy Titilayo Steinfeld, Yasmine Calasse
Rap artist: Lucretius Masanga
Stage: Nthabiseng Malaka
Design and illustration: Balekane Legoabe
Composer: Stephan Bormann
Production assistant: Sophie Cramer
Yasmine Calasse is a South African contemporary and hip-hop dancer, educated at Johannesburg’s Dance Factory and at the Peridance Centre in New York City. She is strongly influenced by the street dance scene, which also shows in the political and social consciousness of her works. As a choreographer, she collaborated with artists like Willie Stark and others, while also staging works by renowned choreographers, among them Stephanie Thiersch, Ching Ching Wong, Ihsan Rustem, Jennifer Archibald, Elisabetta Minutoli, Rayboom, and Jasmin Halper. Her work “Confinement” was exhibited in Kapstadt (Western Province Building for ICA 2020). Yasmine Calasse is the co-producer of AFIA and founder of Relgnite Sessions.
For “It’s not what you think, allow me to clarify“, Yasmine Calasse collaborates with German-Nigerian dancer and performance artist Lucy Titilayo Steinfeld and Brazilian dancer, performer, and choreographer Lucas Lopes.
credits
west off 2025 – Theaternetzwerk Rheinland receives support from the Ministry for Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia and the Cultural Departments of the Cities of Bonn, Düsseldorf, and Cologne.