Lick Life Against
the Direction
of its Fur
Premiere at Kaserne Basel (CH)
September 10, 2025
Dates and times:
September 10: 20.00
September 11: 20.00
September 12: 20.00
September 13: 20.00
September 14: 16.00
(Sept 14 Kaserne provides childcare)
The stomach, the gut, and the processes of digestion are not merely metaphors but sites of real biological and political significance.”
— Elizabeth A. Wilson, Gut Feminism (2015)
In a new choreography by Tyra Wigg and their team, profit-driven algorithms collide with the raw power of our digestive organs. How do these opposite forces interact with each other in the individual and the collective body?
Lick Life Against the Direction of its Fur conjures a both playful and unsettling world eerily close to our own. Three dancers echo an ambiguous optimism from the pre-doomscrolling era of the 1980s. They orbit each other in a restless search for a shared future but it’s tricky to progress when being overfed with movements and words that are hard to digest. This sticky content is chewed and regurgitated in a dopamine-fuelled feedback loop until the internal space of the dancers, and of the theatre itself, screams of sick gut feelings. Hungry eyes, exploring tongues and convoluting stomachs transform this systemic constipation into a metabolic dance that refuses to subscribe.
Credits
Concept, choreography: Tyra Wigg
Dance, performance: Kihako Narisawa, Jessica Tamsin Alleman, Declan Whitaker
Music: Elischa Heller, 222Rn
Light design, technical direction: Chiara Leonhardt
Costume: Anne-Sophie Raemy
Stage objects: Tyra Wigg & Ernestyna Orlowska
Dramaturgy: Juan Felipe Amaya Gonzalez
Production: Paula Alonso Gomez
Co-production: Kaserne Basel
Support: Fachausschuss für Darstellende Künste Basel-Stadt/Baselland, Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia, Ernst Göhner Stiftung, Société Suisse des Auteurs (SSA), Stiftung Landis & Gyr
Residencies: Kaserne Basel, Gessnerallée Zürich, CAMPO Gent
Tour (so far): far° Festival Nyon 2026
Image: Michelle Ettlin