“Do you know that feeling that you don’t know where you come from?”
“Do you know that feeling that when you last felt safe, was thirty years ago?”
“Do you know that feeling that you make eye contact with a white person and see fear in someone’s eyes?”
“Do you know that indefinable feeling that there is a hole in your soul?”
“Do you know that feeling of being hollow and unfinished?”
Amir Vahidi undergoes an identity crisis. He knows no sense of safety, not a place where he ‘hears’. He is always expected to be integrated and assimilated. For a long time he went with it, until he looked into his eyes. He now does that in the eyes, on stage again.
In his first solo performance We drag Among demons Amir Vahidi (35), member of Performance Collective Club Gewalt, breaks apart from those expectations. In a spiritual search along his Iranian-Dutch identity, he reveals inner demons that cause chaos and discussions in his head. Poetic monologues in Dutch, English and Persian are intertwined with music, singing and dance. The common thread of the performance is a Persian mythological story about the hops, a beautiful bird that symbolizes the spiritual search.
Supporting players Hélène Friday, Romy Vreden and David Schwarz guide Vahidi through his journey as the embodiment of his inner demons. They do this by bringing liveliness on stage with unexpected cries and dance movements in the background. They supplement Vahidi with dialogue and singing where necessary, where interactions feel perfectly coordinated.
Photo Sofie Knijff
Kneeling for a visitor
During a quiet, constructive start, Vahidi tells about the house and fruit trees of his grandfather in Iran. As soon as the first songs sound and the monologues about personal and social themes become more powerful, the performance starts, although the whole remains a bit abstract. Does Vahidi also want to send his audience on a spiritual journey? Or only uncover his own identity? Metaphors from Persian mythology such as that of a cherry tree and a valley offer a free interpretation.
More clearly is Vahidi’s critical vision of current themes: the genocide and bombing in Gaza, the position of VVD politician Dilan Yesilgöz as a child of fled parents, embedded structural racism and patriarchy in the Netherlands. According to him, we cannot sit still. Here he also looks the audience in the eyes: literally. In the first row he kneels for a visitor while inviting the rest of the room to make eye contact with a neighbor, in order to feel mutual connection and to critically reflect on everyone’s role in society.
The English songs that interrupt the stories show a different power of Vahidi: his musicality and singing. Slow, melancholic piano sounds carry you, floating through a dream, with subtle Persian melodies that hint in the background. Then uplifting electronic rhythms break through, which shake you awake, while Vahidi sings penetrating texts: “Illusions fail, but not as much as real life does.”
At the end of the last piano ballade, executed in a polyphonic quartet with his fellow players, Vahidi wipes along his cheek. Whether it is a tear or a drop of sweat after the intensive effort of more than an hour, the question remains.
