About This Project
Come-Bat is a 20-minute contemporary dance duet created by me and Ava Jalali during a one-month residency at LakeStudios Berlin in July 2024.
The piece is made up of two episodes, each 10 minutes long, exploring two sides of a dual life.
Come-Bat is about what it means to be born under an authoritarian system, where you grow up with two conflicting identities: one shaped by external force, the other shaped by your own will. As a citizen, you’re constantly shifting between these selves. You hate one part, but must keep it alive to survive. You love the other, but often have to bury or hide it.
As you search for your true identity, you start asking:
Who am I, really?
Am I the part I hate or the part I love?
The one I show, or the one I suppress?
The self I perform, or the self I silence?
Eventually, you realize the battle between your environment and your own will is too loud to ignore. So, you leave the battleground. But that act creates two more versions of you, the one rooted where you came from, and the one now traveling into the unknown. And again, the question returns:
Who am I now?
Am I still the person I was, or am I being reshaped by this new system?
You cling to the old identity. You also start growing a new one, because this new system doesn’t care who you were, it wants you to re-invent yourself based on new needs.
You’ve tried to bring all your “I”s into this new ground, and it still feels like a new battleground.
So are I ready to fight?
Project Name:
Come-Bat
