Theater Forever: Yeliz Pazar / Suzanne Degennaro

Summer Dance Forever and ITA present a theater program packed with thrilling performances. Tonight you’ll see some powerful Waacking onstage! Yeliz Pazar and Suzanne Degennaro, both presenting their work in the Netherlands for the first time, use the dance style of Waacking to express their inner struggle. In the group piece ‘Point of No Return’, Yeliz confronts the moment of irreversible change, where rupture becomes the starting point for transformation. In her first solo ‘Limbo’, Suzanne explores fragmented states of identity, where the feeling of being in-between takes physical form.

Yeliz Pazar: POINT OF NO RETURN 
Yeliz Pazar is a pioneer of Waacking in Germany, known for her distinct expressive style. With POINT OF NO RETURN, she created the first full-length Waacking dance theatre piece in Germany, translating its essence into a compelling work for five dancers.

The “point of no return” describes a moment that changes a life irreversibly. It can arrive suddenly or after a long build-up. After it, things cannot be undone and nothing remains the same. What actually defines that shift? Where does a moment like this begin, and where does it end?

In POINT OF NO RETURN, the dancers approach this threshold through Waacking. Emerging in 1970s Afro-Latinx LGBTQIA+ disco club culture in Los Angeles, the Waacking dance style developed as a response to exclusion and control. It carries gestures of resistance, visibility, and expression in spaces where identity had to be negotiated or hidden.

Through sharp arm movements, poses, rhythm, and musical precision, the piece shifts through states of rupture and transformation. It follows what happens before and after a point where something tips. Between holding on and letting go, between what was and what can no longer be. Honouring waacking’s roots in a marginalised club culture, it simultaneously reimagines it for the future.

Credits
Artistic Direction & Choreography: Yeliz Pazar
Co-Choreography & Dance: Yeliz Pazar, Mario Durán Abreu, Kevin Claudio Ponge Kassoma, Mathis Said, Enting Zhang
Music: Artomatico
Costume Design: Hélène Behar
Lightdesign: Ansgar Kluge, Lucas Wendel, Yeliz Pazar
Producers: Sina Rundel, Uta Engel
Producer Assistant: Eva Jucikas
Outside Eye: Bahar Göen
Photos: Eva Berten
Trailer & Full Performance Video: Deda Productions

Suzanne Degennaro: Limbo 
Suzanne Degennaro is a rising force in the international Waacking scene, consistently placing in the top ranks of battles such as Summer Dance Forever. And who could forget her standout performance in Mounia Nassangar’s STUCK, presented at SDF 2024! Limbo marks her first solo creation and her first work for the stage, shaped by a practice that moves between battle culture, performance, and introspection.

Between intimate vertigo and physical expression, Limbo explores a state of in-between; neither departure nor arrival, but a murky space where doubt takes hold. Through the movement of Waacking, Suzanne gives form to an inner world where celebration, melancholy, and resistance exist side by side.

Through a dance that is both flamboyant and suspended, Limbo evokes the intersex experience. A fragmented relationship with gender, the feeling of living alongside oneself, and a generational sense of drifting; as if on the brink of something that never fully arrives.

Inspired by liminal spaces, those empty yet strangely familiar zones of the post-internet imagination, the piece moves through gentle discomfort, observed solitude, and endless waiting. Limbo becomes a silent cry and a suspended celebration: an attempt to dance what cannot easily be put into words. With this first solo, Suzanne creates an intimate and confrontational work about identity in flux; A dance of edges, turmoil, and untamed beauty.

Credits

DISTRIBUTION
Choreography, interpretation: Suzanne Degennaro
Artistic collaborator, scenography, video creation: Colette Degennaro
Lights: Maël Teillant
Music: Timo Tekken and Suzanne Degennaro
Costume: Suzanne Degennaro
Head of production: Céline Gallet
Production manager: Daphné Bouhours
Tour: Marion Roger
Technical coordination: Joël L’Hopitalier

PRODUCTION
Creation by Suzanne Degennaro
Deputy production: Collectif FAIR-E /CCN de Rennes et de Bretagne, an association that receives grants from the Ministère de la Culture (Direction régionale des Affaires culturelles / Bretagne), the city of Rennes, the Regional of Brittany and Ille-et-Vilaine Departement (FR).
Coproduction: LEBLOCK – Centre Chorégraphique National de Rillieux-la-Pape, Compagnie DCA / La Chaufferie
Support: Attitudes, Creative Europe project funded by the European Union, Project grant - Ministry of Culture (Direction régionale des Affaires culturelles / Bretagne), Artist residency support - City of Rennes

Watch the trailer here.