Insistence: A Butch Ballet is a new socially engaged dance project designed by myself and collaborator Bishop May Down; we work with non-professional performers who identify with butchness and do not have ballet training, in order to make a show that is unique every time and everywhere it’s presented. We are currently developing a tourable model using choreographic containers to enable easeful access and participation for local butches in each location. The project aims to deconstruct ballet through queering and de-centring conventional dance modalities unison and canon. Simultaneously it strives to celebrate and include the vastness and beauty of butch identity.
Insistence: A Butch Ballet is currently in initial R&D supported by Creative Scotland, Tramway, Take Me Somewhere, and The Work Room, and Produced by Hacks. More to come soon!
Photos: Chaoying Rao above/ Astrid Edelman-McCabe below
“There is a tangible energy…an anti-ballet energy, that blurs binaries…the binary of butch and not butch, performer and audience, ballet and not ballet, passive and active, binary and nonbinary, and beyond.”
- Workshop participant
“The playing and the trust…transform the participants themselves, who…weave that play and trust and transformation into their other relationships and spaces”
- Workshop participant
