The mythical dream figure of Sorour Darabi cannot be pigeonholed ★★★☆☆

A meter-long braid dominates the left half of the white floor: a backbone of wool, with a ribcage of long strands on either side. On the right hangs a curtain of curls of the same milky white color. When dripping tones wave past on tape and plumes of smoke rise on stage, you notice the Iranian-French non-binary trans person Sorour Darabi (32). The braid starts in their mouth. When they slowly stand up, the braided hair transforms from spine to tongue and from costume to ponytail. Like a divine seahorse, Darabi strides slowly across the white stage. A fluid being that cannot be caught in the frames of mind of man or woman, man or animal, nature or culture.

You could read references to hydrofeminism, a school of thought that opposes binary categorization and in which water symbolizes the interconnectedness of everything in Durabi’s mythical dream figure, which holds itself to the ground during a flutter dance with ice cubes tied underneath. The museum stage image has nothing to do with the current hair protest in Darabi’s native Iran, Darabi explained after the solo. Natural Drama in Amsterdam: ‘I am a hairy person myself.’

In 2013, Darabi fled to Paris and took the spotlight in Europe with the solos mowgli (about the jungle of ideas behind the concept of ‘wildness’) and farci.e (about the elasticity of a language without grammatical genders). The autonomously operating performance artist is supported by many European partners, including Frascati Productions.

Still missing Natural Drama the legibility of their earlier work, despite the accompanying translations of sung texts. The fraying in their voices is manipulated on tape into a polyphonic choir, from thin vocals to growling howls. You sometimes recognize dance icon Isadora Duncan (1877-1927) with goodwill, who danced free from conservative ballet rules: the ribbons around the ice cubes are reminiscent of pointe shoes. If Darabi were to reduce the distance from the audience a little more, the performance would gain in impact.