Interruption

An unsettling and liberating short dance film that fuses physical theatre, buttocks-dance, and poetic abstraction.

Vulgar Women: A Twerk Symphony offers an elegant spectacle that responds to the shame placed on buttock-led choreography through short film.

Directed and choreographed by dkfash, produced by her company initiative.dkf and commissioned by The Space, this fantastical short film defiantly takes on the respectability politics placed on the bodies of Black women.

In an unapologetic challenge to what is considered ‘high’ or ‘low’ art, Interruption is the first creative instalment from the Vulgar Women universe. Playfully fusing the discomfort of grotesque theatre with the mournful strings of classical music in the haunted beauty of the old Asylum chapel in London, this spellbinding production captures the imagination of its viewers, pushing them to examine the racial, gendered and colonial constraints on buttock-led choreography.

 

“In spaces of Caribbean carnival and African ritual, booty-dancing is a dance of liberation, celebration, dancing free, rites of passage and sensuality.”

Set to an unsettling score of voice, peril and classical music fused with contradictive styles by Luis ‘Gustavo’ Silva Navarro, together, the elements offer an exploration of what’s possible when twerk is showcased outside of its ‘allowed’ arenas. Across the film, dkfash weaves surreal expression, poetry, and the dissection of verbatim social discourse online around “twerk”,
highlighting the greater importance of finding power from within. She draws influence from indigenous African and Caribbean rituals, which all feature buttock-led choreography where these dances herald sisterhood, rites of passage, tradition and, crucially, celebration.

This daring short film pulses as a riot vehicle, centring an art form often cloaked with shame and judgement. Interruption returns to the roots of popularised booty-dancing, with Pan-Afro-Caribbean influences felt across the celebratory production. dkfash experiments with genre and form in this introduction to the Vulgar Women: A Twerk Symphony universe with ambitions of stage, exhibition and music to follow.

Festival selections

The work premiered on initiative.dkf’s website on Thursday 8 May 2025. It has been selected for numerous film festivals including Aesthetica and Women X.