Wild and Free: Jules Pelta Feldman on Byström Källblad’s ‘City Horses‘ at Tanz im August, Berlin

Big, shiny sculptures of bellicose men – emperors, kings, or confederate soldiers – on the back of vigorous stallions are a fixture of the urban environment. A performance by the Swedish duo Byström Källblad that was part of this year’s Tanz im August, Berlin’s international festival for contemporary dance, was determined to challenge this monumental male supremacy through artistic horse play by female dancers in Berlin’s reconstructed historical Mitte. However, as the art historian Jules Pelta Feldman argues, the choreography of City Horses did not so much reclaim a female presence in the contemporary cityscape through dance, but instead undermined the very logic of public monuments, drawing fresh attention to the question of who owns the city.