Urban Essentials 2026 | Double Bill – Dance Performance LIMBO (IT/FR) & IT AM (Kazachstan)

LIMBO | Suzanne Degennaro (Italy / France)

Somewhere between inner intoxication and physical manifestation, LIMBO explores the state of uncertainty, of being in between: neither leaving nor arriving, but inhabiting a blurred zone where one lives in doubt. Inspired by waacking, a dance style that emerged in the queer club scene of Los Angeles at Le Ginos II, Suzanne Degennaro embodies this inner space, where celebration, melancholy and resistance coexist.

Through a dance that is at once extravagant and seemingly frozen in time, LIMBO reveals the experience of intersex people, a fragmented relationship with gender, the feeling of being at odds with oneself, and the state of a drifting generation – waiting for something that never happens. Inspired by “liminal spaces” – empty yet strangely familiar places that occupy a significant place in the post-internet imagination – this solo work develops an aesthetic of gentle discomfort, observed solitude and endless waiting.

LIMBO is a silent scream, a party in an in-between state, an attempt to dance out what cannot be expressed in words. In this debut solo, Suzanne Degennaro presents an introspective and direct choreographic work exploring identity within a shifting, post-contemporary state of uncertainty. It is a dance about existing on the edge, confusion and untamed beauty.

IT AM | Amir Zakirov (Kazakhstan)

A simple tool can radically change the way we perceive the moving body.

In the solo performance IT AM, Amir Zakirov turns his body inside out: he wears an inside-out suit he made himself, a mask with his own face on the back of his head, and specially designed shoes worn backwards. As a result, his dancer’s body moves in opposing directions, disrupting our conventional understanding of human anatomy and opening up space for imagination and radically new movement possibilities.

IT AM is a dance in which a familiar body becomes strange. A quiet unease permeates the work, because nothing is more unsettling than something that looks like us but, in fact, is not. The inverted character embodies the darker side of the human psyche, and the performance becomes an ongoing struggle between the true self and its darker counterpart. At times one takes control, at times the other, yet it remains unclear who will ultimately prevail.

It never screams.
It whispers.
It is.

Creative Team

Choreography and Performance: Amir Zakirov
Duration: 30 min.

Urban Essentials is one of Lithuania’s leading international hip-hop dance festivals. Held annually in Vilnius, this year’s festival is part of ‘Būti tarp. Su. Kintant’ (‘To Be Among. With. In Motion’), the 15th-anniversary programme of Vilnius City Dance Theatre ‘Low Air’.

The festival programme includes dance battles, dance performances, workshops and discussions taking place across different locations throughout the city. It offers a unique opportunity to immerse yourself in hip-hop dance culture, develop your skills and experience Vilnius as a vibrant, distinctive and authentic dance scene.

More information: www.urbanessentials.lt

The festival is funded by the Lithuanian Council for Culture and Vilnius City Municipality.