Theater Forever: Yeliz Pazar / Suzanne Degennaro

Yeliz Pazar is a pioneer of Waacking in Germany, known for her distinct expressive style. With POINT OF NO RETURN, she created the first full-length Waacking dance theatre piece in Germany, translating its essence into a compelling work for five dancers.

The “point of no return” describes a moment that changes a life irreversibly. It can arrive suddenly or after a long build-up. After it, things cannot be undone and nothing remains the same. What actually defines that shift? Where does a moment like this begin, and where does it end?

In POINT OF NO RETURN, the dancers approach this threshold through Waacking. Emerging in 1970s Afro-Latinx LGBTQIA+ disco club culture in Los Angeles, the Waacking dance style developed as a response to exclusion and control. It carries gestures of resistance, visibility, and expression in spaces where identity had to be negotiated or hidden.

Through sharp arm movements, poses, rhythm, and musical precision, the piece shifts through states of rupture and transformation. It follows what happens before and after a point where something tips. Between holding on and letting go, between what was and what can no longer be. Honouring waacking’s roots in a marginalised club culture, it simultaneously reimagines it for the future.

​​Artistic Direction & Choreography: Yeliz Pazar
Co-Choreography & Dance: Yeliz Pazar, Mario Durán Abreu, Kevin Claudio Ponge Kassoma, Mathis Said, Enting Zhang
Music: Artomatico
Costume Design: Hélène Behar
Lightdesign: Ansgar Kluge, Lucas Wendel, Yeliz Pazar
Producers: Sina Rundel, Uta Engel
Producer Assistant: Eva Jucikas
Outside Eye: Bahar Gökten
Photos: Eva Berten
Trailer & Full Performance Video: Deda Productions

Suzanne Degennaro is a rising force in the international Waacking scene, consistently placing in the top ranks of battles such as Summer Dance Forever. And who could forget her standout performance in Mounia Nassangar’s STUCK, presented at SDF 2024! Limbo marks her first solo creation and her first work for the stage, shaped by a practice that moves between battle culture, performance, and introspection.

Between intimate vertigo and physical expression, Limbo explores a state of in-between; neither departure nor arrival, but a murky space where doubt takes hold. Through the movement of Waacking, Suzanne gives form to an inner world where celebration, melancholy, and resistance exist side by side.

Through a dance that is both flamboyant and suspended, Limbo evokes the intersex experience. A fragmented relationship with gender, the feeling of living alongside oneself, and a generational sense of drifting; as if on the brink of something that never fully arrives.

Inspired by liminal spaces, those empty yet strangely familiar zones of the post-internet imagination, the piece moves through gentle discomfort, observed solitude, and endless waiting. Limbo becomes a silent cry and a suspended celebration: an attempt to dance what cannot easily be put into words. With this first solo, Suzanne creates an intimate and confrontational work about identity in flux; A dance of edges, turmoil, and untamed beauty.

Choreography & performance: Suzanne Degennaro
Artistic collaborator, set design & video creation: Colette Degennaro
Sound composition: Yulan Bouqueau
Lighting: Maël Teillant
Costumes & sound : Suzanne Degennaro
Production manager: Céline Gallet
Production coordinator: Daphné Bouhours
Technical support: Joël L’Hopitalier
Executive production: Collectif FAIR-E / CCN de Rennes et de Bretagne, an association subsidised by the Ministry of Culture (Regional Directorate of Cultural Affairs / Brittany), the City of Rennes, the Brittany Region and the Department of Ille-et-Vilaine
Co-production: Le BLOCK · Centre Chorégraphique National de Rillieux-la-Pape 
Support: Attitudes, Creative Europe project funded by the European Union, Project support – Ministry of Culture (DRAC / Brittany) 
Support for artistic residency: City of Rennes Acknowledgements: Yulan Bouqueau