So in 2014 I was part of co-creating a queer performance troupe called Collected Queers;
Collected Queers is a collaborative group who want to see more queer as we know it from the inside. This is the multi-layered, many things are true at once, difficult, uncompromising, nourishing and ever-changing queer community, as we can best pronounce it through music, dance, movement, fashion and art.
This February we are offering our first public performances, as part of Fringe 2015. You can see our event here; http://www.fringe.co.nz/theshows#f7792d70-6001-4fed-aa73-eb542d3cfb1d
Also below is the moving version of the GIF… our business card for the project, and some writing about what we’re up to. It’s exciting and vulnerable and brave and pretty great to be involved with…
Collected Queers is both asking you for, and offering you shelter.
With ‘Open Home Exercise’ we bring performance improvisation into queer domestic spaces. You invite us, we come as a roving band of glitter-bearing, pink ballet shoe-entangled, erotic-chaotic dancing, quite possibly healing, joyful and compassionate unmet-as-yet Family.
Our interventions can be tailored to living rooms, lounges, bedrooms, and even daunting great savannahs of kitchen-living-dining flow. In the comfort or discomfort of your home, we conduct experiments in dancing, chanting, vogueing, feasting, gazing, shame-blasting, stomping and other forms of valiant queer embodiment.
We feed each other sloppily and see what it is like to be disgusting. Does it still feel bad or are we now wholly acceptable to ourselves and each other? We dance as chastely as we possibly can to raunchy pop songs. How easy is it to suppress sexuality? On an ad-hoc catwalk we make genuine attempts at modelling genders other than our own. Can you carry off a mis-fit? Sometimes we simply tangle ourselves up in endless pink pointe ribbon: we give permission to our inner wild ballerinas.
We look forward to furthering, strengthening, honing, developing and curating these instances of queer existence with you. Opportunities for audience participation will be offered during the shows.
Four queer homes will be selected from the invitations we receive and matched to the advertised session times. Please email collectedqueers AT gmail.com to make us an invitation.
Sian Torrington Artist 