Batty Bwoy is a solo performance in collaboration with Karoline Bakken Lund, Veronica Bruce, Jassem Hindi, and Ring van Mobius. 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 queer body to invoke demonic sensitivities and charming cruelties, unfolding vulnerable possibilities in an interplay of consciousness and naivety. The horror and joy of Batty Bwoy, inherent to queer blackness, is unmasked. 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.
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” and queer voices in Norway and Jamaica that have visited and taken part of the process.
Batty Bwoy is a solo performance in collaboration with Karoline Bakken Lund, Veronica Bruce, Jassem Hindi, and Ring van Mobius. 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 queer body to invoke demonic sensitivities and charming cruelties, unfolding vulnerable possibilities in an interplay of consciousness and naivety. The horror and joy of Batty Bwoy, inherent to queer blackness, is unmasked. 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.
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” and queer voices in Norway and Jamaica that have visited and taken part of the process.
Content advisory: Nudity
| Choreography and | |
| performance | Harald Beharie |
| Sculpture | Karoline Bakken Lund and Veronica Bruce |
| Composer | Ring van Möbius |
| Sound designer | Jassem Hindi |
| Outside eye | Hooman Sharifi and Inés Belli |
| Supported by | Kulturrådet, Fond for lyd og bilde, FFUK, Sandnes Kommune, Oslo Kommune, and TOU |
| Co-producers | Dansens Hus and RAS, Performing Arts Hub Norway |
| Thanks to | Tobias Leira, Ingeborg Staxrud Olerud and Phillip McLeod |
