I am not on the Blacklist. 
Performing and unperforming the toxicity of censorship

I am not on the Blacklist  is a dance performance that seeks to investigate the toxicity of censorship in the body and in everyday life. Through practice-based research with a motion-sensor light, Hyoung-Min Kim and Gabriel Galindez Cruz explore the impact that both state-induced censorship as well as forms of self-censorship have had on their lives and their bodies. Does censorship contaminate us like noxious chemicals, imperceptible to the eye but slowly spreading the poison of self-optimisation and suppression into our minds, bodies, and behaviours? 

Through personal experiences growing up in South Korea and Colombia, the two performers recall on stage the material consequences that the supposedly invisible politics of censorship can have on those who find themselves on the “wrong” side of the hegemonic divide. Hyoung-Min’s habit of self-censorship formed from childhood experiences in South Korea. Her fears, that still persist years later and in the diaspora of speaking about this history, show the deep and long-lasting impact that censorship can have on the body and psyche. Gabriel interacts with the toxicity of censorship from an alternate angle, constructing a solo that is embedded in the power of free, unbridled speech. His attempt, doomed to fail in light of the ever-growing number, is to name every environmental Colombian activist who has been killed in the past years due to their revolutionary work. In this context, censorship has a lethal connotation, the act of killing as a way of censoring the body permanently.

I AM NOT ON THE BLACKLIST has no definitive ending in the classical sense. Rather, it employs an ongoing, ever-mutating practice that engages with the subtle techniques of censorship in order to locate it, quarantine it, override it, and perhaps, to find creative and generative ways to interrogate it into everyday survival strategies. 


HYOUNG-MIN KIM was born in 1980 in Seoul, South Korea. She studied at Korea National University of Arts School of Dance (1998-2002), EDDC (NL) (2002-2003), and Das Choreography in Amsterdam (2015-2018). She has worked as a dancer with Constanza Macras, Dorky Park Thomas Ostermeier, and Toula Limnaios in Berlin. Since 2014, she has presented her own choreography, including D.M.Z (2003) in Tanzmesse Düsseldorf, Hippocampus (2004) in Theater Winterthur, Hello (2008) in Melkweg, Amsterdam and at the Peak Nam Jun Art Center Opening, South Korea,  and Call back (2007-2009) at Spring Wave Festival in Seoul and at Sophiensaele in Berlin as part of Tanztage Festival. In 2009, she choreographed (making of) District with Lena Meierkord and performed it at Sophiensaele’s Tanztage Festival, Seoul International Dance Festival, and in Bremen and Mainz. From 2010 to 2013, she worked with Tommi Zeuggin and created Guest (2010) at DOCK 11 in Berlin, Ghost (2011), DUST (2012),  and Everything Else (2013) at Uferstudios in Berlin. She also presented The Story of Those Who Left (2014) at RTO in Seoul. Her solo work Gelbe Landschaften (2014) was shown in Dresden at Projekttheater in Leipzig at LOFFT - DAS Theater and at Seoul Art Center. She was awarded “Best Choreography of 2014” by the Korean Association of Dance Critics and Researchers. In 2015 and 2016, she worked with Anna-Luise Recke and created Nach dem Ende kommt noch was, which premiered at DOCK 11. In 2018, she collaborated with Gabriel Galindez Cruz on I am not on the Blacklist and performed at in Tanzfabrik-Open Spaces in Berlin and Mullae M30 in Seoul. She has received funding grants for individual projects from the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe, Hauptstadtkulturfonds, and Arts Council Korea.

GABRIEL GALINDEZ CRUZ is a Berlin-based artist, dancer, and choreographer. Originally from Cali, Colombia, Gabriel began his education as a dancer in parallel to his Psychology studies at the Universidad del Valle, after which he enrolled in the Centre National de Danse Contemporaine in Angers-France where he specialized in Contemporary Dance and Choreography, before subsequently moving to Frankfurt, Germany to study at the Hochschule for Musik und Darstellende Kunst. Gabriel became part of the Toula Limnaios Company from 2004-2007 and performed in pieces such as Spuren, Irrsinn, and Life is Perfect. In the 2009-2010 season, Gabriel was a member of the Staatstheater St. Gallen Dance Company in Switzerland. He has also collaborated as a dancer with the Staatsoper in Berlin, Germany, the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, Italy, Eastman-Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui in Antwerp, Belgium, and the Akademie für Alte Musik in Berlin, Germany. Since 2005, Gabriel has been part of the Sasha Waltz & Guests Company as a dancer in the ensemble for several international productions, and as a choreographer for the Children’s Dance Company. He has created several pieces that have participated in festivals, such as Invisible in the Plataforma Festival, Berlin, Germany, AIUAIO which was awarded “Jeunes Talents du Cirque Europe” and “Undo Mudra” in the Masdanza Festival (2016) in the Canary Islands, Spain, and Festival Danza en la Ciudad (2017) in Bogotá, Colombia. In collaboration with the conductor Andres Orozco-Estrada, he has staged Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring with the Colombian Youth Philharmonic and Petrushka with the Houston Symphony Orchestra. Other recent works include: Ella am Strand for the Landestheater Schleswig, Holstein, Cabaret for the Landesbühne Niedersachsen Nord and Get Loose for the ZiguZajg Festival in Malta. Gabriel has also engaged with artistic social projects particularly with children with the support of the German Ministry of Education.