Dominican-American artist Ligia Lewis premiered her new performance, Wayward Chant, at Gropius Bau in Berlin, simultaneous with her solo exhibition at the same institution, I’M NOT HERE FORRRRR…. Lewis, whose stage aesthetics have been described as “somewhere between horror, comedy and thriller,”11Lewon Heublein, “Ligia Lewis: Me Seeing You Seeing Me,” PW Magazine, February 15, 2023, http://www.pw-magazine.com/articles/ligia-lewis-me-seeing-you-seeing-me. conceived and choreographed the performance specifically for the atrium at Gropius Bau, an epic late-nineteenth-century neo-Renaissance building in the center of the city.

Capped by a glass roof that lets in natural light, the 1,200-square-meter atrium is surrounded, on the ground and first floors, by stone balustrades and wide walkways. The vast mosaic floor has been covered entirely by Lewis, wall to wall, with a red carpet. As spectators arrive and find a place to stand or sit, pan flute sounds drift down from above. Two of the performers, holding mics on opposite sides of the first-floor stone railing, look down on us and begin to speak: “We are gathered here today for a thing called fuckery….”

There’s smoke in the air, and the original musical composition by George Lewis Jr. aka Twin Shadow and Wynne Bennett creates a grounding somatic through line, moving over the next sixty-five minutes from the flutes and chimes through chanting choruses to Gregorian choirs. Speakers have been set up on all four sides of the atrium and on multiple levels, creating a dense envelope of sound all throughout.

There are seven performers altogether: all Black, some masc, some femme, some in-between. They are wearing regular clothes, dresses and skirts, kneepads, and ankle sneakers in flexible materials. Coming in one by one, each introduces themself to the audience. They move like angry toddlers or puppets on a string. Lights beam across the smoke-filled air and dancing silhouettes are projected onto the frescoes of the atrium. Then they all begin to move, either alone or in pairs, strutting, leaning, rolling, jumping, or posing. They use the architecture as a counter point to their movements: The walls, floors, stairs, and columns are pulled into the performance as an expanded stage.

Each performer takes a turn commanding our attention, climbing a balustrade, doing a handstand, executing a series of gestures. Their bodies move in fluid and unruly ways. There is stomping, sauntering, and twirling, sudden falling to the ground. Some gestures are elegant and careful; others are jerky and abrupt. They spread out among the audience along the edge of the carpeted arena. They pose and crawl and drag each other. They lie on the ground and roll about. We are not trying, their poses seem to say: We’re here. You’re here. So what?

Standing on the edge of the crowd, I am mesmerized by the constant movement. I don’t know where to train my attention, because the performers are sometimes at opposite ends of the space. The actions and sounds have immersed me, and made me feel involved even though all I’m doing is standing there. Because there is no set focal point, I too must move, be alert and ready for what might happen next.

Lewis calls the performers a live, moving chorus. “I have been making performative collages by layering seemingly disparate elements like musical epochs, theoretical texts and movement vocabularies,” she explains.22Ligia Lewis, “About Vocal Incantations, Waywardness and Compounded Time,” interview by Nora-Swantje Almes, Berliner Festspiele Mediathek, November 19, 2025, https://mediathek.berlinerfestspiele.de/en/performing-arts-season/2025/interview-ligia-lewis. In terms of movement, choreographer Merce Cunningham has been a model, though Lewis actively choreographs against any supposed formal neutrality. “Figurations are constantly unfolding…. There is both a shiftiness as well as a ‘I don’t give a fuck’ kind of posturing. Right when you think that you have something, it’s fleeting,” says Lewis.33Lewis, “About Vocal Incantations, Waywardness and Compounded Time.”

The performers, in their attitude and movement, are, like the seven pool players of Gwendolyn Brooks’s poem, real cool.44Gwendolyn Brooks, “We Real Cool,” 1960, http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/28112/we-real-cool. They lurk, they strike, they sing. They seem downright casual. I see this nonchalance in the slow, deliberate way one performer chews gum and stares at the audience, or how another rocks back and forth, as if there was no audience at all. What I call nonchalance, Lewis has dubbed “waywardness” (hence the title). Influenced by Black Studies literary scholar Saidiya Hartman, waywardness, for the artist, is “another way to describe a rebel or someone who is wilful and takes pleasure in their obstinate disobedience.”55Lewis, “About Vocal Incantations, Waywardness and Compounded Time.”

From different areas around the perimeter of the atrium, the performers begin to shoo the clustered audience by motioning their arms. Commands from the speakers spew instructions: “You! Yeah, you! Yes. Move out of the way. Keep moving!” The audience are like a reluctant flock, with some slower than others to catch on that the fourth wall has been broken: They get up, shuffle left and then right until a whole area has been cleared. Eventually, viewers are pushed completely to the atrium’s edge. Steadily, awkwardly, and with much discomfort, the performers have rearranged the entire dynamic.

Wayward Chant’s special vocabulary of movements and gestures recalls the everyday microaggressions that accompany Black experience: open mouth stares, flagrant invasion of personal space, random shouting from strangers. These things happen on any given day in Berlin. “Lewis does not offer comfort,” one reviewer affirms, “instead, her work unsettles.”66Lily Fürstenow, “Ghosts of the Past Haunting Us Today: Georgian and Global Voices on Berlin Stages,” Georgia Today, December 4 2025, https://georgiatoday.ge/ghosts-of-the-past-haunting-us-today-georgian-and-global-voices-on-berlin-stages. Here in the atrium Lewis reverses the roles: The performers will not be captured by any spectator’s gaze.