trompoppies:blackmilk: tiran willemse
“Black male melancholia”
– tiran willemse
It is dark. Four spotlights beat the ground and form a pulse, a rhythm, a beat. Spotlights searching. In the dark.
A shadow appears. At the corner of the room. It moves softly. Hides, is constantly on the go, and still very still.
This is how I read the opening of Tiran Willemse’s trompoppies:blackmilk.
A smaller stage is placed in the back of the larger stage room where the performance takes place. In front of it there are a lot of microphones. A line of spotlights creates a hallway from the audience to the smaller scene. Smoke, darkness and lightshows creates an intense and enchanting atmosphere in the room.
Willemse moves in relation to the light, the room and the atmosphere. With, and without rap music. Sometimes he disappears (due to smoke, darkness or placing). In one part of the performance, he repeats “Now you see me. Now you don’t”.
He gives the movements connected to black masculinity a new context, and places them in relation to femininity, performativity, wanting to be see, running, hiding, and a want for being invisible.
There is a part of the show where he just keeps running, holding up the tempo, the strength, the image. I do not know for how long he ran, I do not know if he was running from or towards something, or if he just ran and ran without getting anywhere.
Willemse’s trompoppies:blackmilk captures black masculinity in a number of ways, out of levels of interpretation, of forms. He creates a space for the melancholy, the pride, the strength and the will to keep running. The show keeps reinventing itself, keeps creating perspectives and depth. It never gets too long, or too slow. It keeps giving.
Vår Maria Granados-Langeland