“blackmilk” is the first part of the “Trompoppies” trilogy by Tiran Willemse. Trompoppies is Afrikaans and describes drum majorettes in uniform. The performance examines one of the choreographic elements of the formation dances they perform: the precise hand gestures. Fusing trompoppies movements with the melodramatic gestures of white femme starlets and gestures associated with Black masculine rap stars the work explores the distance between images of African and Afro-American male-presenting bodies. “blackmilk” intervenes into this limiting repertoire of representations using the means of performance and explores a variety of affective bodies in the grey zones of legible identities, opening them up to a complex sensitivity that the artist describes as black male melancholia.