Dance:

I have been dancing as long as I can remember but have only recently realised, what only a few years ago I could have only dreamed of, dancing on stages in front of audiences.

Coming from a background of gymnastics and martial arts I started dancing (properly as it were) when I was 18, when I moved to London. I went to classes at my university's dance society and after my first year I started running it. I performed in, and put on, shows there for 4 years until I finished my Master's degree.

(My homage to Neil Gaiman's Death, but with three arms. During a dance production at the LSE in 2002 I think)

"Gender Violence"

Instead of going to a dance school after finally realising I was not cut out for 'working life', I started my PhD. Prior to this decision to leave full-time paid employment and to return to academia, I auditioned at a few dance schools with a piece that I choreographed in response to what I saw as the aesthetisation (if that is a word) of violence in popular culture at the time. Responding to the images brought to us by films like The Matrix (which was considered beautiful and uncontroversial) and Fight Club (which was considered ugly and very controversial) I chose to comment on the ways in which violence was being shown to be balletic and graceful and without physical consequence. The piece moves from highly choreographed, tight, graceful movement into ever degrading mess, until it is just bloody and crass.

It got me in to a school. Which I was happy about, but I decided for a couple of reasons that I would not go the dance route and headed back to academia, hoping that maybe I would be able to integrate my feelings, my academia and my politics into my dance at some point whilst there (but honestly not holding out much hope).

A few years later I got my chance to do just this when I performed (very nervously) at the 2nd ever Club Wotever. I performed a piece tenuously based on my audition piece, this time about how it is to be subject to violence as a gendered person (specifically a trans-gendered person in my case, but I don't limit the interpretation).

(Images from 2nd ever Club Wotever, photos by Kelly and Verena respectively)

I felt exalted when people responded positively and since then I have expanded the piece. It is now presented in three parts which broadly follows my responses to violence and how it has made me feel. I don't want to describe what it looks like per se but it is designed to be intense, disturbing at some points and hopefully a bit uplifting at the end. It is a dance piece but is also designed to be accessible and open as a performance piece in general.

In the time that has followed I have performed the piece in some very different spaces. The pictures here are from when I performed it in Stockholm in 2004. This was the first time I had performed on a full stage. I gave it my all and I got so much back from the audience that as I write about it, and think about it,I can't help but think of it as one of the most magical moments of my life.

("Gender Violence", performed at Stockholm Pride, July 30, 2004 (Photo by Paval Maira))

(Gender Violence pictures by Del Lagrace Volcano at Stockholm Pride 2004)

In February 2005 I took the piece to Warsaw, another incredible experience, performing infront of over 600 people. We made the front cover of their national Metro newspaper (see Cabaret section for picture). Just prior to arriving in Warsaw a courtcase had been heard there about the murder of a trans woman in which the perpetrators received a drastically reduced sentence because "they didn't mean to kill her, just really really hurt her". These issues are still incredibly heated there and the politics is very hard at the moment. The people I met there were intensely hardworking, brilliant, committed and incredibly warm and generous. An amazing community.

The day after coming back from Warsaw I performed the piece at my university, for the same dance group that I had run 8 years prior. I performed in front of 300 people, predominantly straight (I imagine), and again I was terrified. I had a very good reception and it made me feel positive that material like this can cross borders and boundaries of all kinds and people can relate to oppression in all its forms from their own experiences.

I continue to work on the piece. I have performed it regularly since, including at a West End Theatre, at the Hackney Empire and in a tiny room at the LSE amongst other spaces. I will continue to perform it in the future, but I am also looking into realising the piece in different mediums. There are clips of it and I speak about the piece in Zemirah Moffet's documentary ("Mirror Mirror") on gender and performance and I am in pre-production on a film version of the piece. It has also been filmed for a Swedish TV show called "Sex with Victor".

"The Look"

Again, like the piece on violence I hope this is accessible and relevant to a wide spectrum of experience of 'body' and 'image'. I think this a common experience, a common feeling that is hard to realise in words and I hope through dance I can get something across that we don't or can't talk about. I performed it for the first time at Smack! in April 2005 and most recently at Stockholm Pride 2007. I am looking forward to working on it more and performing it again soon.

"The Look", performed at Smack! 2005.

"Gender Stripping" / Miss File: on Burlesque

This started as a short little piece that explores (quite personally) trans-sexuality and gender-performance. It was designed to be a gender-fuck striptease performance, to Leonard Cohen's "I'm Your Man". It was supposed to be fun, sexy and also a mind-job in terms of gendered sexuality and performance. I was very happy when it went over very well at Wotever Stockholm and I was asked to perform it again at Club Sade in Stockholm in November 2005 for their 30th Anniversary party.

I took the idea and used it again, but in a fuller sense with a performance piece that I did at the Hackney Empire (Wotever Xtravaganza, March 2006). This time, it is Miss File who strips. The piece was designed to show a self-repressing character (an element of the self, in this case myself) stripping away her inhibitions, and trying to break free from her self-impossed restraints. It was a very personal piece, and it was quite a step for me, to strip like that. I was bowled over by the touching and very understanding response. I love this crowd. This piece is now incorporated into my one woman show "Being Me Performing Myself" and also into "The Genderqueer Playhouse" film.

"Zombie"

This is a piece that I put together for the Transfabulous 2007 peformance. It is a short piece that I am still working out that has to do with that confusion that we all felt as adoloescents trying to figure out "who we are". It is something that I think people keep with them their whole lives, but gets covered up with other concerns. I try to explore the insecurity that I think is very common in everyone, especially in this century surrounding this question through a dance piece that plays with many of the motifs of being a "outcast teen"... which I so clearly was (and in some part of my soul, I still am).

(Performing "Zombie" in 2007 - by AbsolutQueer)

"Secretarial Love Story" and more....

More dance in the works.... watch this space....