Knife Hearts

Knife Hearts is an international co-production between Egypt and Germany that brings together four dancers—three Egyptian and one Turkish-German.

As artists of color, they challenge Western definitions of dance and performance as well as the expectations placed upon them. Drawing on Raqs Sharqi (the long tradition of belly dance) and Mahraganat (Egyptian street dance), and in dialogue with urban dance practices from Egypt and the region, the performers expand and transform the vocabulary of contemporary dance.

The performance explores Mahraganat—an emerging music and dance genre whose name literally means “celebrations” and “festivals.” Often described as an Egyptian adaptation of hip-hop, shaabi, rap, and electronic dance music, Mahraganat blends these influences into an intensely collective and festive expression that gives visibility to marginalized bodies.

Emerging in the urban peripheries of Cairo, Mahraganat articulates the perspectives of communities that are often marginalized, stigmatized, or labeled as dangerous. Despite social rejection and repeated state repression, Mahraganat has spread widely both regionally and internationally over the past two decades.

By employing Mahraganat dramaturgically to shift and question social narratives—both in Egypt and in Germany—a performance emerges that poses fundamental questions: Who is allowed to perform—and why? What happens when dance is removed from its original context? What role does the audience play in the perception and interpretation of a dancing body?

In a time of increasing discrimination, exclusion, and racist violence against Black people, Indigenous peoples, and people of color—in Germany, Europe, and beyond—Mahraganat may open up a different way of seeing.

The Mahraganat’s repertoire of movements features recurring motifs that evoke battles, knives, and fire. This ritualized choreography stands for virtuosity and control, but also for the dance’s ability to transform and mediate conflicts. People dance so as not to fight—to transform gestures of aggression into moments of connection and to turn violence into the potential for community and celebration.

The knives are present—yet here they cut through boundaries and labels, opening up spaces for encounter, connection, and collective experience.