Boys Who Don’t Sleep
Live performance with choreography, spoken word, sound and lighting, 60 min
2025
Boys Who Don’t Sleep asks what a dance floor can hold when queer social life depends on temporary spaces. Combining choreography, spoken text, electronic sound and light, the performance moves between solitary gestures and collective formations. Performers circle, mirror, interrupt and support one another, testing how a group is assembled through rhythm, attention, proximity and care.
The work develops from Abdullayev’s research into queer life and electronic dance culture in Azerbaijan. Nightlife appears as a social practice: a space where bodies recognise one another, resist isolation and rehearse togetherness. Yet collectivity remains fragile. It must be rebuilt through repetition, exhaustion, vulnerability and trust. The performance considers movement as shared knowledge and club space as an improvised architecture produced by sound, light and bodies. Individual gestures pass from one performer to another, becoming a vocabulary that no single person owns.
Performed by Vincent Heppner, Julian Moritz, Dan Özeri, Roque Vargas and Emile Wendt.
Supported by SUMAC Space, Berlin and Vienna, and IN THE MOUNTAINS Festival, Tbilisi and Berlin.
