Stage pictures taken by Mayra Wallraff

To Cajole

by Alessia Luna Wyss & Camilla Przystawski 

To Cajole is a dance piece, a duet, a confrontation—a dialogue between two women developed in a state of injury for one of them. Inspired by the sentimental radiance of 1960s and '70s Italian pop songs and reflecting on their own biographies, they challenge the ways women's relationships are still too often portrayed in cinema, literature, and music. What happens when we reject these familiar narratives?

Drawing from their shared experience in martial arts (Play-Fight, Systema), contemporary dance and improvisation, the performers navigate intimacy, tension, care, and resistance. Their bodies shift between fluidity and conflict, between softness and defense—exposing the complexity of connection beyond clichés of competition or harmony. Playful, raw, and deeply physical, their movement unfolds in real time: leaning on a lose structural frame, each performance is a unique improvisational arrangement, an evolving negotiation of presence and power.

To Cajole creates a space where vulnerability does not mean weakness, where support does not mean submission. It invites the audience into an open-ended encounter: How do we support each other when falling? How do we fight without reproducing violence? How do we stay present and open to surprise on stage, allowing real emotions to surface while maintaining a heightened performative state?

This piece is fueled by research into self-defense, the origins of violence, human connection, collaboration, and confrontation — inspired in part by Elsa Dorlin's 'Self-Defense: A Philosophy of Violence'.

It is an act of resistance, a physical argument, an homage to sisterhood and a queer-feminist contribution to the public sphere. We claim space, challenge expectations, and refuse to be cajoled.

Kindly supported by Garage29 Brussels and TanzTangente Berlin, Chez Georges Studio Brussels.