Flamboyant, defiant, and unapologetically elegant – Dandyism transforms resistance into an art of supreme style. Rooted in the legacy of the Sapeurs from Brazzaville and Kinshasa, this performance brings the aesthetics of Black joy, pride, and rebellion into sharp, dazzling focus.
Choreographer Ziza Patrick leads four performers in a kinetic tribute to Congo’s style revolutionaries, who used fashion to reclaim dignity and autonomy during the colonial era. With deep roots in 18th-century European dandyism, this African adaptation turned elegance into provocation and survival. By the 1960s, it had evolved into a global subcultural movement – part celebration, part resistance, and wholly original.
Through a striking fusion of street and contemporary dance, the performers channel the swagger, precision, and sheer presence of the dandy – not just as an image, but as a way of being. Each gesture is deliberate. Every outfit, a manifesto. The performers move with rhythm and intention, embodying a tradition where identity and beauty become tools of defiance, celebration, and cultural memory.
Looking good becomes a radical act.
Premiered in 2018 as Patrick’s first creative work, Dandyism combines rich, ostentatious costuming with unfiltered movement vocabularies from across the African continent. The result is raw and unrefined, cool and confrontational, a performance that both honours the past and asserts a vision of a future shaped by Black creativity, self-expression and pride.
In Dandyism, self-expression is elevated to spectacle – fierce, joyful, and unforgettable. It’s a statement, a celebration, and a challenge to rewrite the rules of style, presence, and who gets to take up space.
Infectiously energetic … high-stepping footwork, gentlemanly gestures and a lot of fun and funk.
● Ziza Patrick is a Rwandan-born, British choreographer and interdisciplinary artist based between Gateshead and London. His work spans dance, performance, sound, and installation, and explores themes of Black identity, beauty, gender, and cultural resistance. With a background in both street and contemporary dance, Patrick brings raw physicality and conceptual clarity to the stage. Their artistic practice is rooted in experimentation and a desire to challenge binary norms, societal structures, and dominant narratives. In Dandyism, he honours the Congolese sapeur tradition and reclaims fashion as a tool of empowerment, protest, and Black self-expression.
