Jua Kali (Hot Sun)

Every morning they go to work. The going itself is work. They all head somewhere: in Nairobi to the matatu (shared taxi), in Berlin to the U-Bahn station. These are streams of people, dense flows that carve their way through the city day after day.

Many try to avoid the walk - moving their workplace closer to home or finding new ways of working to shorten or sidestep the daily commute altogether.

The Kenyan-German dance production Jua Kali by Jared Onyango and Lea Pischke examines the everyday journeys of people in Nairobi and Berlin. It asks how political and urban conditions can shape and transform something as fundamental as human movement. Locomotion becomes a universal motif here - a tension between togetherness and solitude in the midst of the crowd.

Duration: 45 minutes

Choreography: Jared Onyango, Lea Pischke
Dance: Jack Bryton, David Pallant, Lea Pischke, Antonio Carta (Mali)
Sound design: Lea Pischke, Ron Bracht
Lighting design: Reinier Martínez Badilla
Costumes: Alice Fassina

Jared Onyango is an artist from Nairobi, Kenya, working at the intersection of choreography, writing, photography and sound. He studied at P.A.R.T.S in Brussels and at the École des Sables in Toubab Dialaw, Senegal, between 2010 and 2019. He is a recipient of the Prince Claus Mentorship Award (2022) and a fellow of the Pina Bausch Foundation (2016). His current artistic research explores how built environments shaped by colonial structures influence movement and human behaviour.

Lea Pischke trained in fine arts, experimental music, dance and choreography, and works at the intersection of somatic practice, movement aesthetics and the politics of space. She is active internationally as a performer and choreographer. Her recent film MmOTHERS, a collaboration with Russian-French composer Evgenii Lebedev, is...