Name: This is not an accident
Start: 2025-08-27T17:30:00+03:00
Location: Uudenmaankatu 23 F, 00120 Helsinki, Finland

Performance by Cilai Herrmann at Myymälä2
25.8. starting at 17:30

This is not an accident
A river. A human. Both water bodies. Both once fluid, untamed, and multiple. Both straightened.
This solo is a choreography of resistance, shaped by Cilai’s experience as a non-binary body raised alongside the Rhine: a river they have only ever known as channelled, bordered, disciplined. But once, it meandered in a multiple. They go in search of the Rhine’s queer traces, listening to what was lost when its waters were straightened, and its movement became binary.
What happens to a river when we force it to flow in only one direction? What happens to a gender body?
Through chanting, looping, storytelling and drag Cilai ask how bodies that were straightened into a resource can queer themselves again.

Cilai Herrmann (they/them) is a dancer, choreographer, and facilitator. Their practice is rooted in ecological and queer human and more-than-human inquiry, moving between theatre stages, gallery spaces, and outdoor environments such as glaciers. They studied Dance Performance at Stockholm University of the Arts (SKH) and Berlin University of the Arts (UDK).
Their works — Der Wohlstand ist ausgebrochen, Let us be the second body — have been shown across Europe. As a performer, they have worked with Stephanie Thiersch, Amanda Piña, Thiago Granato, Hooman Sharifi, Ana Libório.
Cilai co-founded Rhizome Dance Collective and Sympoietic Society, with whom they exhibited at HIAP (FI) and received the Saari Residency (FI). They also lead workshops on contamination, composting crisis, and multispecies embodiment—facilitated at spaces such as Floating University Berlin (DE), Walserherbst Festival (AT).