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,” and queer voices in Norway and Jamaica that have visited and taken part of the process.

The 9pm performance of Batty Bwoy on Thursday 17 October is included in our Bear (AKA Full Week) Pass. Click here for more information about our passes.

Credits

Choreography/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
Producer: Mariana Suikkanen Gomes
Distribution: Damien Valette

Thanks to: Tobias Leira, Ingeborg Staxrud Olerud, Torbjørn Kolbeinsen and Phillip McLeod

Supported by: Kulturrådet, Fond for lyd og bilde, FFUK, Sandnes Municipality, Oslo Municipality and TOU.

Access

This show contains loud sounds.