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EXOTIC ANIMAL

Klaus Enrique Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon

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EXOTIC ANIMAL

Ming Poon

The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house” – Audre Lorde


Exotic is warm and spicy. It is one letter away from erotic. It  promises adventure. Exotic is somewhere far away and foreign. Exotic is  strange, but also very appealing and desirable. It is always over there,  not here; them, not us; you, never me. Exotic is dark and mysterious,  but its threat is tamed and contained.

The exotic industry has become a big and lucrative market, offering  goods and services ranging from food, fashion, music, books, health  products, workshops, collectibles, antiques to cultural attractions,  theme events, tourism and corporate branding. It has often been touted  as a fun and light way to promote the appreciation and experience of  foreign cultures. But is it as innocent as it appears? What lurks  beneath its foreigner-friendly surface? This collaborative performance  invites the audience to see what it takes to create the ideal exotic  look.

Drawing on his personal experience as a dancer of Asian origin, Ming  Poon looks at how eurocentrism, globalization and cultural consumerism  contribute to the exoticization of his body for the art market.  Approaching the body as a site on which meanings, values and boundaries  are inscribed, he interrogates how the exotic gaze displaces and  appropriates his body, turning it into a cultural commodity and a symbol  of subjugation. Exotic Animal both invites and confronts the exotic  gaze. Staring defiantly back, it attempts to shift the power relation  between the gazer and itself.


Exotic Animal is an online audience collaborative performance that takes place via the platform Zoom.




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Concept | Choreography:  Ming Poon

Dramaturgy:  Dandan Liu

Sound Design:  Farah Hazim

Lighting Design:  Martin Pilz

Production Management:  M.i.C.A.

Key Visual Image:  Klaus Enrique

Live Stream Production:  Jonathan Florez



Ming Poon is a Berlin-based choreographer who began  his career as professional dancer in 1993 and started to develop his  choreographic practice in 2010. He creates choreographic interventions,  where spectators are invited to exercise their agency to create change.  His works are interactive and collaborative in design. They usually take  the form of collaborative performances, public interventions and  one-to-one encounters. He works with vulnerability, care, peripherality  and failure as performance strategy.

His practice is influenced by Buddhist concept of interdependence and  care, Judith Butler’s resistance in vulnerability, Augusto Boal’s  theatre of the oppressed and Nicolas Bourriaud’s micro-utopias.

His works have been presented at Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay  (Singapore), The Substation (Singapore), English Theatre Berlin |  International Performing Arts Center (Berlin, Germany), Hebbel am Ufer  (Berlin, Germany), Scenario Pubblico | Centro Nazionale di Produzione  della Danza (Catania, Italy) and Südpol (Luzern, Switzerland).

3. Dez. 2020

With kindly support of

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English Theatre Berlin

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