Botis Seva / Far From The Norm

Botis Seva / Far From the Norm: Until We Sleep

The new track by the hip-hop star from London is a dark adventure, a story of resistance and change. A lone warrior leads her group of wandering nomads through changing times, but longs for a faith, up to the light that penetrates her dark arena from above. With hard rhythms and throaty sounds, the music dictates the undulating dance style; with quick jumps and wild movements, the group escalates into krumping, the underground alternative to commercialized hip-hop. This hard, raw dance challenges the soul of the dancers, whose pain is only released in a kind of trance.

Feathered armour and dragon scales point to rebels who outgrow their former existence as colonized bodies. Lances of light flash in their fight against a darkness that simply won't go away. The figures, which sometimes seem almost fantastic, remain vague, suddenly appearing in bright spots of light; sometimes we catch a glimpse of an outer, hidden world. Perhaps everything is just a nightmare before the sleep that gives the piece its title... Until We Sleep pits hope against the burden of responsibility. In this fierce piece, Botis Seva, who last performed in Stuttgart with BLKDOG, also questions discrimination and racial conflicts in today's world.

Her story is one of not giving up. It can be read as a reference to colonial violence and slave hunting or to wars and flight or as the story of a psyche that uses imagination to arm itself against breakage and draw strength.
Cologne City Gazette, 2024

It resembles the hero's journeys you see in movies. "Until We Sleep" is a reflection on human leadership, on how to exercise it and on how to find the balance between leading a community and one's own responsibility.
NRC Handelsblad, Netherlands

We see the dancers searching, struggling and sharing, always in the shadows, like otherworldly forms that absolutely must move.
Fringe Review UK

Botis Seva, contemporary dance's most influential artist, is a phenomenal performer of boundless emotional intelligence, of innovative, demanding and grueling physicality.
The National Herald, Greece