Harald Beharie: Batty Bwoy (2022)
Monday, 24 November at 6:00 p.m.
dance performance and after-talk
The Old Power Station
Duration: 75 min.
With the solo Batty Bwoy (2022) – a title that could be translated into English as faggot, or the more literal, archaic, and forgotten Dorothy’s friend – dancer, performer, and choreographer Harald Beharie introduced an unparalleled disquiet to the international dance scene. Batty Bwoy is remarkably effective because it uses basic theatre techniques to expose the queer body on stage in a completely vulnerable and transparent way, engaging with spectator bodies (or the body in general). This prompts us to determine whether we are more defined by our identity or our place in the world, a question psychoanalysis once linked to the power of terror. The work positions us at the centre of knowledge that we must objectify, perceive, and define ourselves in relation to. It compels us to ask: What emerges if phobias associated with different social genders beyond heteronormativity are wielded as a performative text?
Harald Beharie explains: “Batty Bwoy is a solo which doesn’t start with a question, or a critique, but from a place of play and desire, entangled in violence and charming cruelty. Through a reappropriation of the Jamaican term ‘Batty Bwoy’ (literally, butt boy), slang for a queer person, the work twists and turns the myths of the black queer body unfolding vulnerable possibilities in an interplay of consciousness and naivety. Scrutinizing the absurdity of a queer monstrosity, Batty Bwoy articulates through the porosity of bodies and languages, their mouths swallowing and regurgitating the corporal fictions projected onto their skins. In an odyssey of droning prog-rock, Batty Bwoy attacks and embraces sedimented narratives around the fear of the queer body as a perverse and deviant figure. The expression ‘Batty Bwoy’ is used to evoke an ambivalent creature that exists in the threshold of the precarious body, liberated power, joy, and batty energy! The work has found inspiration in mythologies, disgusting stereotypes, feelings, and fantasies of the queer body and identities, homophobic dancehall lyrics, 70s Giallo films from Italy, resilient ‘gully queens’ (Jamaican homeless trans people exposed to harassment and violence), and queer voices in Norway and Jamaica that have visited and taken part of the process.”
Choreography and performance: Harald Beharie
Artistic collaborators/sculpture: Karoline Bakken Lund and Veronica Bruce
Composer: Ring van Möbius
Sound designer: Jassem Hindi
Outside eye: Hooman Sharifi, Inés Belli
Supported by: Kulturrådet, Fond for lyd og bilde, FFUK, Sandnes Municipality, Oslo Municipality and TOU.
Producer: Mariana Suikkanen Gomes and Kristina Melbø Valvik
Distribution: Damien Valette
Thanks to: Tobias Leira, Ingeborg Staxrud Olerud, Torbjørn Kolbeinsen and Phillip McLeod
*Slavcho Dimitrov will speak with Harald Beharie after the performance in the foyer of the Old Power Station. The conversation will be held in English.
* This performance features nudity.
Organised by: Kino Šiška and NDA Slovenia in collaboration with Bunker
Supported by:
Cover photo: Margot Sparkes