DANCE

Galactic Crush 2: Into The Cold-  جَلاكتيك كرتش ٢
Part 2 of a science-fiction saga
2025
Dance performance by Stephanie Kayal and Abed Kobeissy
Music by Abed Kobeissy

In the midst of a genocidal present and an uncertain future, Stephanie Kayal and Abed Kobeissy revisit their failed crime-fighting power couple from their recent work Galactic Crush Part 1. After completely botching their Don Quixotic mission, the two protagonists face total despair and decide to flee their homeland. They build a DIY intergalactic spaceship and take off in search of hope in another galaxy.
Confronting their protagonists with a harsh gaze, Kayal and Kobeissy question the ethics surrounding such a decision at a time when an entire population is being annihilated for holding on to their homeland.
Using dance, live music, video and text, they wield dark humor as both a shield and a tool for survival.
Marooned in the cold darkness of space, the two protagonists of Galactic Crush 2: Into the Cold await their fate.
Kobeissy and Kayal won the ZKB Patronage Prize of 30'000 CHF at the 2026 Zürcher Theater Spektakel for Galactic Crush 2: Into The Cold.

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The Statement of The ZKB Award Jury:
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"We loved «Galactic Crush 2: Into the Cold» for its honesty about the fatigue and rage of wartime. It is a retrofuturistic exploration of memory and hope in the face of perpetual failure. On board a DIY spaceship, Stéphanie Kayal and Abed Kobeissy take us on an exercise of shared reckoning to an imagined future of coldness and solitude. The artists show us that distance is a privilege when people live not only in different levels of risk, but in fundamentally different time and space dimensions. 
The science fiction and comic genre sits in deliberate contrast to these heavy inquiries. Along with their android companion, Stéphanie and Abed offer playfulness and complexity in a timeloop without escape, watching catastrophes unfolding from  space as resources grow scarce.
The piece withdraws from direct images of nightmares in favor of sounds, fragmented memories, and humour, a strategy that acknowledges the difficulty of continuing artistic practice when homelands are being abandoned and lost. Galactic Crush 2 addresses the turbulence and atrocity unfolding in the world, but it does so from a planetary perspective that extends beyond borders. What if we all were aboard this one spaceship, together, facing an uncertain future?"
Concept and text: Stephanie Kayal, Abed Kobeissy Performance: Stephanie Kayal, Abed Kobeissy, Pôl Seif Choreography: Stephanie Kayal Original music: Abed Kobeissy Set and light design: Pôl Seif Video artist: Firas El Hallak Dramaturgical advice: Krystel Khoury, Sabine Cmelniski Photo and Video documentation: Firas El Hallak Dramaturgical advice: Krystel Khoury, Sabine Cmelniski Production: Hiros Co-production: Le Théâtre de la Vie, Le Théâtre National Wallonie-Bruxelles, Alkantara, as part of Common Stories, a Creative Europe programme financed by the European Union, Kunstencentrum Buda, Parallèle – Pratiques artistiques émergentes internationales With the support of: Ettijahat – Independent Culture, workspacebrussels, ISAC – Institut Supérieur des Arts et des Chorégraphies ArBa-EsA, Studio Le Labeur — Dame de Pic / Cie Karine Ponties. This project is part of the Cycle de professionnalisation pour une durabilité du secteur culturel – volet Jeunes chorégraphes du Sud- led by Parallèle, with the support of the Cultures et création program of the Fondation de France and the patronage of the Caisse des dépôts.