Cheer Up Love (it might never happen) is an evening of live art and dance about identity, gender, sexuality, rage and revolution. A mini festival within the festival, see a variety of boundary pushing works in one evening. Messy, chaotic and visceral, these avant garde artists are reimagining the way we look at performance. Expect the unexpected.
PREPARING FOR: RAGE ON STAGE
Presented by AHANI SARAVIA HERRERA & JEMIMA YONG
Join us as we prepare hundreds of plates for their destruction. Preparing for: Rage on Stage creates a space to think about feminist anger. What does feminist rage look like & what labor goes into creating space for it?
Rage on Stage is a durational performance led by the question: What happens when we juxtapose different manifestations of intersectional feminist rage? We want to create a performative space where theory, action, and interpretation exist simultaneously, culminating in a performative experiment where texts are being read, plates are being smashed and a soundscape is being created in response.
The work is made up of three parts, in this first part, we will prepare for the performance by creating a space to think about what feminist rage is whilst we prepare hundreds of plates for the final work (and their destruction). In this space, we will think about the labor that goes into making space for rage and think through what the shapes and manifestations of feminist rage, exhaustion and anger look like - helping us prepare the content for the next stage of the performance.
This is a participatory performance: we welcome audiences to join us, bring texts, thoughts, and images or simply come tell us about what makes you fucking mad. We will have texts in the space that you can read to us as we perform. It’s an open relaxed space made for people to come and go.
CLOSET BODIES
Presented by PINK SUITS
Closet Bodies is a new project by pink suits exploring Queer and Non Binary identities, questioning how being ‘closeted' shapes our development and our relationship to our bodies, our gender, our sexuality and our sense of self. It is an exploration of the closeted versions of ourselves that were repressed and hidden behind closet doors and bedroom doors from childhood into adulthood. The areas of our identity and expression that we were, or still are, too embarrassed or scared to explore. Versions of ourself that we were told were shameful, that are now lost, unable to re-find. This project is us trying to rediscover all of the potential versions of ourself that we have hidden away from the world. Having killed off so many parts of ourselves, can we ever truly find our authentic self?
Closet Bodies is a live dance theatre performance set inside an immersive visual arts installation of projection, film, sculpture, art and sound, exploring intimacy, fantasy, sexuality, identity and disruption of the gender binary. Through wild punk dance improvisation, dressing up, strutting around, singing and screaming this work is a cathartic performance of fantasy, it is finding Queer joy a we carve out space to be loud and camp and free.
Closet bodies is influenced by the development of our work within the Queer clubbing, drag and political music scene. It is an homage to these currently and increasingly threatened subcultures. With so much conflicting, confusing and damaging in- formation in the mainstream media right now about sexuality, gender and expres- sion as well as the limiting of peoples rights to gather, protest, to express them- selves publicly and within the safety their communities. This is a time of increasing mental health crisis and global political polarisation with huge and complex exposure on identity politics. This piece addresses our relationship to these incredibly prevalent and overwhelming issues whilst also exploring fantasy, camp aesthetics and striving for optimistic futures.
Through this work we exist loudly. Aggressively, exploring the full range of gender and sexuality in ways that feel so limited in todays society. It is a piece about community, support, self interrogation and self love... Radical self love as an act of resistance in a world that capitalises on insecurities with self worth and validation.
Initial support from The Barbican Centre and Arts Council England
S71, an embrace
Presented by SOPHIE BRAIN
A live dance piece within a cinematic installation, taking a journey from home, through the body, to the club; exploring ideas of belonging, identity and community.
In an unassuming space in the Theatre, choreographer and performer Sophie Brain creates an expansive experience against the backdrop of a 3 part film series which shows the body inhabiting different environments.
Her lived experiences of dancing in nightlife spaces and aspects of her identity related to region, class, gender and body enrich a movement language with cultural references as expressed through movement.
Collaboratively produced with J Aria (original score), Ro Murphy (Cinematographer) Denzel Daniels (movement mentor during research stages) and Martha K Margetson (Production Assistant).
Hollie Miller - Stiletto Silhouette
Stiletto Silhouette is a surrealist dance performance exploring absurdist body positions and the seductive prowess of stilettos and spandex.
This feminist surrealist piece plays with humour through attempts at contortion, catwalk and cabaret to an electronic sound score complete with smashing plates, purring cats and distorted techno beats.
Thank you for allowing artists to take creative risks, the world needs it now more than ever.
Programmed artist
