COCKTAIL

Cocktail is a performance where Neusser assumes a fictional character and acts as a hostess. She leads the audience through a sequence of cocktails. Each drink acts as a portal into different moments in dance history. The performance is rooted in the spirit of Dionysus, the Greek god of wine.

Cocktail unfolds as a shared ritual of intoxication and awareness, where the audience is invited to surrender to shifting states of being and to reconsider what it means to feel, to remember, and ultimately, to be free. The performance weaves together voice, movement, and video projections to create a layered, intimate atmosphere where boundaries dissolve, between performer and audience, past and present.

One of the drinks opens the audience to the opulence of the court of Louis XIV, another to the radical transformations of modern and postwar practices with choreographers such as Isadora Duncan and Tatsumi Hijakata. The hostess invites the audience to experience dance history, not only intellectually, but physically through the effect that the drinks have on their bodies. The cocktails’ textures, temperatures, and flavors mirror shifting modes of expression in dance. As the audience tastes each cocktail, they are guided through reflections, imagery that activate memory, sensation, taste and imagination.

The work creates connections between ancient ritual, dance history and contemporary western culture. It explores the tension between control, oppression and freedom, questioning how the body is shaped, controlled and at times liberated throughout history. Rather than presenting dance as something to observe, Cocktail proposes it as something to ingest, an embodied, Dionysian experience that unfolds from within.

Concept, choreography and performance: Carima Neusser
Photo: Clara Silva

Performances:
Edificio Humboldt, Mexico City February 7, 2026
SP Escola de Teatro, Sao Paulo, February, 25, 2026
Bajo Bajio, Mexico City, March 1, 2026

Travel supported by: The Swedish Arts Coucil and Helge Ax:son Johnsons stiftelse.