UK Premiere

Joshua Serafin (Brussels)

PEARLS

Saturday 19 October 2024, 9.00pm – 10.10pm

Birmingham Hippodrome, Thorp Street
Birmingham, B5 4TB United Kingdom + Google Map

Presented with FABRIC

70 minutes | £15/13 | 16+

This performance contains nudity.

Three people with long black hair are dancing with their backs to each other in a close circle. The lighting highlights parts of their faces and bodies.

Michiel Devijver

3 people are in a dimly light space look up at a yellow cocoon-like object hanging from the ceiling.

Michiel Devijver

A person is dancing centre stage, we can only see the whites of their eyes. They are wearing a light translucent dress.

Michiel Devijver

3 people face one another to create a triangle shape, their arms are outstretched and they are dancing.

Michiel Devijver

3 people in black embellished leotards are dancing together in a tight circle. The image is blurred, suggesting movement.

Maryan Sayd

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In their artistic exploration, Joshua Serafin wrestles with the fractures & wounds imprinted by empire on the body, soul, and community. For the work PEARLS, the multi-media artist draws inspiration from nonnormative genders celebrated in the precolonial Philippines. Together with fellow artists Lukresia Quismundo, and Bunny Cadag, Serafin abandons the binary they have inherited from colonial culture and returns to the ancient past in search of the spiritual roots of Filipino society. With a gaze toward & away from imperial history, the three performers advance gender-diverse existence as an alternative blueprint for the future. PEARLS thus becomes an exercise of healing that offers an opportunity for queer & trans people of color to transfigure dark and traumatic histories into something beautiful, similar to pearls formed from foreign particles which irritate the oyster’s mantle. PEARLS is the last part of the trilogy “Cosmological Gangbang”.

PEARLS is included in our Bear (AKA Full Week), Otter (Weekend Max), and Pup (Weekend Lite) Passes. Click here for more information about our passes.

Credits

Concept: Joshua Serafin
Performance: Joshua Serafin, Lukresia Quismundo & Bunny Cadag
Sound: Pablo Lilienfeld
Scenography: RV
Light: Ryoya Fudetani
Costumes: Katrien Baetslé
Video: Federico Vladimir Strate Pezdirc
Artistic Assistance: Rasa Alksnyte
Theory & Poetry: Jaya Jacobo
Outside Eye: Arco Renz

Coproduction: VIERNULVIER (BE), BIT Teatergarasjen (NO), HAU Hebbel Am Ufer (DE), beursschouwburg (BE), STUK (BE), WpZimmer & C-TAKT (BE), Theater Rotterdam (NL)

Supported by: Vlaamse Gemeenschap, Vlaamse Gemeenschapscommissie

Residencies: Emerging Islands

Acknowledgement: Talaandig-Manobo community and Kulahi in Bukidnon

The text includes translations by Christian Jil Benitez, Rica Paras & Macky Torrechilla

Access

This performance contains strobe light and haze effects.

Fierce Says

Combining dance, song, and text, PEARLS is a ritual of healing. Fresh off their installation at this year’s Venice Biennale, Joshua Serafin and their collaborators conjure something ferocious, virtuosic, tender, messy, and playful. PEARLS is a feast and it is divine.

Details

Saturday 19 October 2024

9.00pm

Birmingham Hippodrome, Patrick Studio

UK Premiere

Dana Michel (Montreal)

MIKE

Saturday 19 October 2024, 2.00pm – 5.00pm

Building 170, Ground Floor, Lambournes, 174 Great Hampton Row
Birmingham, B19 3JP United Kingdom + Google Map

3 hours | £15/13

This performance contains nudity.

A person in a blue shirt sits on the floor of a sparsely furnished, stark white room, holding a vacuum cleaner. Their arms are outstretched.

Carla Schleiffer

A person sitting on the floor with crossed legs is wearing sunglasses and holding tongs in their left hand and a long cord connected to a vacuum cleaner in their right hand. Various items are scattered around on the floor.

Françoise Robert

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Dana Michel specializes in creating situations governed by their own logic. She lives in a world of objects to which she gives new meaning and purposes, away from binary and linear thinking and doing. She breaches social norms from a position of curiosity rather than provocation, gently ushering supposed “marginal figures” to the centre of the conversation. With humour and sensitivity, she questions our very modes of existence.

MIKE asserts the nomadic aesthetic that has become Michel’s calling card over the course of her career. In an open space, during three hours, MIKE invites the audience to spend time inside its universe. It revolves around work culture and self-respect, and puts forward a burning question: is it possible to live public lives that reflect our inner selves? Put your faith in Michel’s hands, one yes at a time. (Enora Rivière)

MIKE is included in our Bear (AKA Full Week) and Otter (Weekend Max) Passes. Click here for more information about our passes.

Credits

Created and performed by: Dana Michel
Artistic activators: Viva Delorme, Ellen Furey, Peter James, Heidi Louis, Tracy Maurice, Roscoe Michel, Karlyn Percil, Yoan Sorin
Scenographic consultant – Technical direction: Romain Guillet
Sound consultant: David Drury
Production: SCORP CORPS – Viva Delorme, Dana Michel
Distribution: neon lobster – Giulia Messia & Katharina Wallisch
Coproduction: ARSENIC – Centre d’art scénique contemporain (Lausanne, Switzerland / Suisse), National Arts Centre (Ottawa, Canada), Festival TransAmériques (Montréal, Canada), Julidans Amsterdam (Netherlands), Kunstenfestivaldesarts (Brussels, Belgium), MDT (Stockholm, Sweden), Montpellier Danse (France), Moving in November, (Helsinki, Finland), Wexner Center for the Arts of The Ohio State University in Colombus (United States of America).

Creative residencies / Résidences de création: Alkantara (Lisbon, Portugal), ANTI Festival (Kuopio, Finland), National Arts Centre (Ottawa, Canada), Kinosaki International Arts Center and Kyoto Experiment (Japan), Kunstenfestivaldesarts (Brussels, Belgium), Künstler*innenhaus Mousonturm (Frankfurt, Germany), Montpellier Danse (France) creation residency at Agora, cité internationale de la danse, with support from BNP Paribas Foundation, RIMI/IMIR SceneKunst (Stavanger, Norway), Shedhalle (Zürich, Switzerland) with the kind support of Tanzhaus Zürich and the Embassy of Canada to Switzerland, The Chocolate Factory (NYC, United States of America)

The creation of this work is being made possible thanks to the financial support of Canada Council for the Arts, Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Québec, Ministère des Relations internationales et de la Francophonie and Conseil des Arts de Montréal.

Access

This durational performance invites audiences to move around the space, and come and go as they need to. Soft seating and blankets will be available for people to ensure they can sit comfortably. There is one small step or a ramp into the space, and a wheelchair accessible toilet is available.

Fierce Says

Dana-fucking-Michel. We presented the UK premiere of the now iconic Yellow Towel in 2014 and last saw her at the festival in 2019 as part of Andrew Tay and Stephen Thompson’s Make Banana Cry. We’re thrilled to welcome her back to Fierce because, simply put, no one is doing it like Dana. Whether we read it as dance, performance art or live art, it’s inexplicable, singular, magical. (And, please: stay for all three hours.)

Details

Saturday 19 October 2024

2.00pm

Iron House

UK Premiere

Tiran Willemse (Zurich)

Untitled (Nostalgia, Act 3)

Saturday 19 October 2024 – Sunday 20 October 2024

54-57 Floodgate St
Birmingham, B5 5SL + Google Map

70 minutes | £15/13

This performance contains nudity.

A person wearing a t-shirt and jogging bottoms is doing an arabesque in front of a white wall. The image is in black and white.

A person is jumping or spinning, their figure is blurred in motion.

We can see a person’s head and shoulders, they have their back to the camera, and their hands raised elegantly in front of them.

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In Untitled (Nostalgia, Act 3) the South-African born, Europe-based choreographer Tiran Willemse invokes his own multiple histories of dance through a kaleidoscope of the 19th century ballet classic Giselle, the Kuduro from Angola, and the Nigerian genre Alanta. The ghost story of Giselle becomes the primary vehicle through which Willemse gives his past selves space to be as they are – ghosts, not dead, who have not left fully, though they may have been asked to. Both an exercise and an exorcism, Untitled (Nostalgia, Act 3) is an evocation of Black experience within European contexts, and a thinly veiled masquerade of its absurdities. As differently gendered bodies claim space for expression, their haunting simultaneously haunts cisnormativity.

What bubbles to the surface may be headless but it’s not shy. The emerging dance is simultaneously a solo by Willemse and an ensemble performed with the unresolved tensions that move him. In limbo between presence and absence, these bodies -rendered invisible, suppressed, (as certain histories often are) invited, or not- have nevertheless come back to reclaim Willemse’s body. These multiple consciousnesses are given the room to rehearse both as and with Willemse, a repétition (rehearsal) with a difference.

The 3:30pm performance of Untitled (Nostalgia, Act 3) on Sunday 20 October is included in our Bear (AKA Full Week) and Otter (Weekend Max) Passes. Click here for more information about our passes.

Credits

Concept, Artistic Direction & Performance: Tiran Willemse
Dramaturgy: Andros Zins-Browne
Music: Tobias Koch
Choreographic Advice: Laurent Chétouane
Light Design: Fudetani Ryoya
Light Operator: Max Windisch-Spoerk
Sound Operator: Thibault Villard
Production: Paelden Tamnyen, Rabea Grand

Co-Production: Gessnerallee Zürich, Arsenic – Contemporary Performing Arts Center, Lausanne

Supported by: Stadt Zürich Kultur, Fachstelle Kultur Kanton Zürich, Pro Helvetia, Schweizerische Interpretenstiftung SIS, Migros-Kulturprozent

Fierce Says

Tiran is a compulsively watchable performer with an innate understanding of his body’s relationship to space. This one’s a beauty.

Details

Saturday 19 October 2024

12.00pm

Sunday 20 October 2024

3.30pm

UK Premiere

Alessandro Schiattarella (Basel)

Zer-brech-lich

Saturday 19 October 2024 – Sunday 20 October 2024

Midlands Arts Centre, Cannon Hill Park
Birmingham, B12 9QH United Kingdom + Google Map

65 minutes | £15/13

Three people stand in front of three white light boxes. The person on the left is wearing silver trousers and a fluffy blue cropped jacket. They have one hand raised pointing at the ceiling and the other on their waistbelt. The middle person is wearing gold trousers, and yellow top and white gilet. They are using one crutch; the other is leaning against the lightbox. The person on the right is wearing a silver trouser suit and holding a microphone to their mouth.

Clemens Heidrich

A person is standing at a green desk with a microphone and a series of buttons on. Their hair is in pigtails and they are holding one out to the side whilst speaking into the microphone.

Clemens Heidrich

Three performers on a dimly lit stage, one standing in centre reaching out, while two others sit on the floor observing. A circular light is on the floor in the centre of them.

Clemens Heidrich

Person wearing a pink helmet and blue fuzzy jacket speaks into a microphone on stage. Two blurred figures adjust large white panels in the background.

Clemens Heidrich

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Zer-brech-lich is a captivating musical dance theatre production suitable for audiences of all ages. In this mesmerizing performance, three talented disabled performers bring to life songs specially composed by Swiss musician Gina ÉTÉ. These songs share a common theme: fragility, explored from both personal and political perspectives. Can fragility be a powerful political statement? Is it possible that fragility possesses a unique power to unite people and act as a catalyst to challenge the false ideals of strength, beauty, and success often perpetuated by ableist societies? How can fragility unite people?

Throughout the performance, the performers answer these questions through a blend of direct, political, and poetic expression, often infused with humour. They dance with their vulnerability, caring for and supporting each other as they playfully construct and deconstruct images and sets. By doing so, they reveal the raw mechanisms behind the creation of ‘illusions,’ aiming to spark the audience’s imagination of a future where diversity replaces the ‘norm.’

Through their dynamic and heartfelt expressions, the performers of Zer-brech-lich invite the audience to rethink societal perceptions of fragility and strength. Their performance is a poignant reminder that true power and beauty lie in embracing and celebrating our differences.

The 2pm performance of Zer-brech-lich on Sunday 20 October is included in our Bear (AKA Full Week) and Otter (Weekend Max) Passes. The 7pm performance on Saturday 19 October is included in our Pup Pass. Click here for more information about our passes.

Credits

Directed and Choreographed: Alessandro Schiattarella
Choreographed and Performed by: Victoria Antonova, Alice Giuliani, Meret Landolt (x Laila White)
Sound: Eugenio Fabiani
Video: Manuel Justo
Voice Off: Linda Wolf
Music Songwriting: Gina ÉTÉ
Musical Director: Richard Schwennicke
Stage Design: Margarete Albinger
Costume Design: Giulia Marcotullio
Light Design: Uwe Wegner
Dramaturgy: Martin Mutschler
Props: Stella Kuprat, Ingmar Mühlich 

Zer-brech-lich is the inaugural production of the Jupiter project, co-produced by the Opera and Schauspielhaus Hannover, together with the Theaterformen Festival, in cooperation with the Hamburg Theatre Academy. It is now part of the association cinquantatré based in Basel, Switzerland, and supported by the Fachausschuss Theater und Tanz.

Access

This show has integrated audio description and subtitles in English.

Fierce Says

Zer-brech-lich (German for fragile) is a disability pop concert with strong dashes of DIY theatrical magic and banger after banger. It’s sweet, charming, and just a bit addictive (and yes, you might hear us humming the songs all festival).

Details

Saturday 19 October 2024

7.00pm

Sunday 20 October 2024

2.00pm

UK Premiere

Steven Cohen (Lille)

put your heart under your feet... and walk!

Friday 18 October 2024, 8.00pm – 9.00pm

Midlands Arts Centre, Cannon Hill Park
Birmingham, B12 9QH United Kingdom + Google Map

60 minutes | £15/13 | 18+

The video in the performance includes graphic content partially filmed in a slaughterhouse. Please contact Fierce at contact@wearefierce.org for more information.

A close up of a person’s face and shoulders against an orange background. They have intricate and highly decorative face paint in orange, white, gold and black and exaggerated lashes.

Pierre Planchenault

A person in a tutu is standing on stilts made of small white coffins. They are bending forward leaning on large poles in either hand. Behind them on a screen we can see a pair of pointe ballet shoes. On the floor are objects light in perfect squares of white light.

Pierre Planchenault

The torso, head and shoulders of a person rises out from a bright space filled with smoke. They are wearing a corset and have elaborate face painting. Their right arm is raised and pointing to the ceiling and their left hand is outstretched.

Allan Thiebault

A person is behind a large gold chandelier lighting its candles. We can see they have highly decorative face paint on.

Pierre Planchenault

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Steven Cohen engages in a deeply moving ceremony in memory of his partner, the dancer Elu, who passed away after 20 years of life together. A cathartic gesture doubled with a brave profession of faith in art as a ritual that celebrates life. He invites the public to celebrate love with him, and to engage in dialogue with death. Everything that happens is real.

“This work is an expression of accepting my destiny in not dying alongside Elu, an experiment in how to deal with survivor guilt in an effort to keep my amputated heart still beating, in how to bear tribute to our lives so richly danced in poverty.

I will let the dead bury the dead and I will produce a vital art, in celebration of our shared life – sometimes with the wind in its sails, sometimes by crawling on “the boulevard of broken dreams”

The last wish that Elu expressed to me on his deathbed was “I want to be with you forever”. It will be so.”

Attending a work by Steven Cohen is always an indelible experience. His ability to transform his body into a work of art, his face and his skull into a landscape, seems limitless. Painted, adorned with rhinestones, butterfly wings, entirely powdered, he becomes here a magical and striking deity of timeless beauty.

put your heart under your feet… and walk! is included in our Bear (AKA Full Week) and Otter (Weekend Max) Passes. Click here for more information about our passes.

Credits

Choreography, Scenography, Costumes and Interpretation: Steven Cohen
Lights: Yvan Labasse
Videos: Richard Muller & SHU
Video Management: Baptiste Evrard
External Regard: Catherine Cossa
Stage Management: Samuel Mateu

Production: Cie Steven Cohen
Co-Production: humain Trop humain – Centre Dramatique National (Montpellier), Montpellier Danse, and Dance Umbrella (Johannesburg) with the support of DRAC Nouvelle-Aquitaine

Show created on June 24, 2017 at the Centre Dramatique National de Montpellier as part of the Montpellier Danse Festival.

Access

This performance contains haze effects. In addition, there will be a quiet space at MAC to de-compress following the performance if needed.

Fierce Says

Steven Cohen is a legend. He returns to Fierce after presenting SPHINCTEROGRAPHY in 2014 and we are honoured to present maybe the final performance of put your heart under your feet… and walk! The images he creates here are haunting, sumptuous, devastating, and undeniable. We can’t wait to talk to you about this one afterwards.

Details

Friday 18 October 2024

8.00pm

Midlands Arts Centre, Theatre

UK Premiere

Ramona Nagabczyńska (Warsaw)

Silenzio!

Friday 18 October 2024, 5.30pm – 6.30pm

Berkley St
Birmingham, B1 2LF United Kingdom + Google Map

Supported by Centrala

60 minutes | £15/13

This performance contains explicit language.

Maurycy Stankiewicz

There is a spotlight on the back wall to the right. Four people are doing shoulder stands with their legs splayed. Their skirts rest on the floor and we can see their bare legs and underwear.

Maurycy Stankiewicz

Two people in baroque dresses look down at a third person also in a baroque dress who is lying on the floor looking downwards. Two people hold closed fans.

Maurycy Stankiewicz

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Opera is the centre-point for this performance by Ramona Nagabczyńska. In order to tell us about female voices, she reaches for opera – a performative arts form which has remained almost completely unchanged for centuries.

We tend to associate voices with the symbolic sphere; with meanings assigned to sounds. We forget that it is the manifestation of complex physical attributes. The voices which evade the symbolic order are moved beyond conventions: which does not mean that they do not exist – only that we have lost the ability to hear them. Traditional female song practices have found their dominant equivalent in the virtuoso operatic arias created by male opera composers. This is where the original voice ecstasy mixes with the refined propaganda of a harmful order.

The ancient Greek practice of aischyrology, based on the use of obscene language, emerged from feminine rituals. No contemporary equivalent of this practice exists – quite the opposite: vulgarisms and references to the abject side of the body are disturbing when they come from the mouths of women.

The political aspect of the human voice is defined not only by the meanings of the words which are uttered, but in equal terms by marking the physical presence of specific bodies.

Silenzio! is included in our Bear (AKA Full Week), Otter (Weekend Max), and Pup (Weekend Lite) Passes. Click here for more information about our passes.

Credits

Choreography: Ramona Nagabczyńska
Performers and Co-Creators: Katarzyna Szugajew, Karolina Kraczkowska, Barbara Kinga Majewska, Ramona Nagabczyńska / Anna Steller
Dramaturg: Agata Siniarska
Music: Lubomir Grzelak
Vocal Parts Production: Barbara Kinga Majewska
Scenography and Costumes: Dominika Olszowy
Assistance with Costumes and Scenography: Dominika Święcicka
Lights Direction: Jędrzej Jęcikowski
Tailor: Emil Wysocki
Baroque Dance Teacher: Marta Baranowska (Cracovia Danza)
Partners: Zachęta Narodowa Galeria Sztuki, Centrum w Ruchu

This performance was created as part of the Poszerzanie Pola project, in association with the Art Stations Foundation in Poznan.

Co-financed by the Minister of Culture and National Heritage from the Cultural Promotion Fund

Access

There is a set design model available for touch tours. To book one please email contact@wearefierce.org.

Fierce Says

You’re probably wondering: Opera? At Fierce? Just hold tight because what begins in the traditional form blasts off into something raucous, riotous, and deeply pleasurable.

Details

Friday 18 October 2024

5.30pm

CBSO Centre

UK Premiere

Alina Arshi (Lausanne)

Entepfuhl

Thursday 17 October 2024, 11.00pm – 11.20pm

19 Harford St
Birmingham, B19 3EB United Kingdom + Google Map

20 minutes

Free

This work contains violent imagery.

A person’s upper torso is central. They are holding their elbow up to their mouth with their left hand and biting into the forearm of their right hand.

Gregory Batardon

This is a collage of images, including: some written text in Urdu; a person standing on a blue card with large wheels with the word ‘Titanic’ painted along the side; a piece of paisley fabric; and an image of a foot hanging out of a window.

Alina Arshi

The person is kneeling down, their arms are wrapped around one another and they are biting their forearm. Their fingers are splayed out.

Gregory Batardon

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“‘Any road,’ said Carlyle, ‘this simple road to Entepfuhl, will lead you to the end of the world.’ But the road to Entepfuhl, if followed right to the end, would lead straight back to Entepfuhl, which means that Entepfuhl, where we started, is that ‘end of the world’ which we set out to find in the beginning,” lays printed on page 77 of Fernando Pessoa’s The Book of Disquiet.

Heavily influenced by her recent return trip to India with references to the mudrās, symbolic hand gestures present in Indian dance, Alina Arshi attempts to excavate her identity and capture the feeling of living between multiple cultures. Entepfuhl is a bite-sized dance performance that packs a real punch.

Entepfuhl is included in our Bear (AKA Full Week) Pass. Click here for more information about our passes.

Credits:

Created and Performed by: Alina Arshi
With thanks: Jessica Allemann, Robinson Filomé Starck, Nicole Seiler

Additional support from La Manufacture, Les Urbaines, Arsenic – Centre d’art scénique contemporain

Fierce Says

Alina’s doing something here that’s so visceral, so strange, and so utterly compelling. She’s serving Goya’s Saturn Devouring His Son-slash-ouroboros realness: a bite-sized dance performance that packs a real punch.

Details

Thursday 17 October 2024

11.00pm

Birmingham Black Box Theatre

UK Premiere

Jeremy Nedd (Basel)

from rock to rock ...aka how magnolia was taken for granite

Thursday 17 October 2024, 7.00pm – 8.15pm

20 Sheepcote Street
Birmingham, B16 8AE + Google Map

Presented with performance, possession + automation

75 minutes | £15/13

5 people, 2 in grey tracksuits, 3 in white tracksuits, are facing each other dancing. There is a backdrop of snowy mountains on the right.

Philip Frowein

5 bodies are wrapped around each other in a pile. They are wearing grey and blue tracksuits. There is a backdrop of snowy mountains behind them.

Philip Frowein

5 people in blue and grey tracksuits are sat on the floor on the right side of the frame looking up at hanging microphones. There is a snowy mountain backdrop behind them.

Philip Frowein

A person is centre of the frame in a white tracksuit with the hood up. Their arms are outstretched and they’re looking down. There is a snowy mountain backdrop behind them.

Philip Frowein

We see a person’s legs. There are concrete blocks attached to their shoes. They are wearing grey tracksuit bottoms and holding a microphone lead which is also laid out across the floor behind them.

Philip Frowein

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Inspired by a rapper’s copyright lawsuit against a video game company, Basel-based choreographer Jeremy Nedd’s latest work explores a dance move known as “the Milly Rock.” Five performers (including the multi- talented Brandy Butler, Zen Jefferson, Nasheeka Nedsreal and Serge Desroches) examine the Milly Rock, a dance move inspired by the rapper 2 Milly. In doing so, they search for the hidden poetry and virtuosic freedom found in social and viral dance moves. Taking a look into the “algorhythm” of marginalized movement languages one asks: can a dance move belong to anyone? And, when yes, who actually profits from it?

from rock to rock …aka how magnolia was taken for granite is included in our Bear (AKA Full Week) Pass. Click here for more information about our passes.

Credits

Concept/Choreography/Performance: Jeremy Nedd
Performance: Brandy Butler, Nasheeka Nedsreal, Zen Jefferson, Jeremy Guyton
Technical Management & Lighting Design: Sebastian Sommer
Stage Design: Laura Knüsel, Jeremy Nedd
Sound Design: Fabrizio Di Salvo, Rej Deproc, Xzavier Stone
Dramaturgy: Anta Helena Recke
Choreographic Assistant: Kihako Narisawa
Production: Caroline Froelich (Moin Moin Productions)
Touring: Caroline Froelich (Moin Moin Productions), Arina Frölich

In coproduction with Kaserne Basel, De Singel Antwerp, DDD – Festival Dias da Dança Porto, Gessnerallee Zürich, Les Halles de Schaerbeek

With the kind support of Fachausschuss Tanz & Theater BS/BL, Ernst Göhner Stiftung, Jacqueline Spengler Stiftung

Fierce Says

We love Jeremy Nedd, who did a digital residency with us back in October 2023. We’re suckers for repetitive movements in performance, but from rock to rock takes variations on the viral Milly Rock dance and conjures something consciousness-altering, expansive, joyous, and irresistible.

Details

Thursday 17 October 2024

7.00pm

Crescent Theatre, Main House

UK Premiere

Harald Beharie (Oslo)

Batty Bwoy

Wednesday 16 October 2024 – Thursday 17 October 2024

Birmingham Hippodrome, Thorp Street
Birmingham, B5 4TB United Kingdom + Google Map

Presented with FABRIC and performance, possession + automation

75 minutes | £15/13 | 18+

The performance contains nudity and explores themes of homophobia.

A person is crouching down tongue out eyes scrunched shut in the centre of the picture wearing trainers and knee pads. Behind to the left is a low structure in red.

Julie Hrncirova

A person is curled upside down on a red surface, we see his back which is sweating.

Julie Hrncirova

A person wearing kneepads and trainers is on all fours on a raised red surface. We cannot see the person’s face whose head is hanging down.

Julie Hrncirova

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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 9:30pm 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.

Fierce Says

With Batty Bwoy, Harald takes his body to the extreme and brings us along for the ride. This tour de force will leave your necks, knees, tongues, and assholes vibrating long afterwards.

Details

Wednesday 16 October 2024

9.30pm

Thursday 17 October 2024

9.30pm

UK Premiere

Ásrún Magnúsdóttir and Alexander Roberts (Reykjavík/Trondheim)

Teenage Songbook of Love and Sex

Saturday 15 October 2022, 5.00pm – 6.00pm

20 Sheepcote Street
Birmingham, B16 8AE + Google Map

Supported by Performing Arts Centre Iceland. UK Premiere.
Included in our tiered discount offer.

55 mins £13/11

- Loud noises / music
- Moments of complete blackout
- possible use of haze/smoke
- contains reference to r*pe and/or sexual assault
- contains strong language and adult themes

A group of teenagers standing together facing the camera with hands raised.

Image by Owen Fiene

A group of teenagers sat on the floor one in front of the other close together in a line formation.

Image by Laimonas Puysis

A group of teenagers sat on the floor spread out slightly

Image by Laimonas Puysis

a teenage girl plays the guitar, she has blue hair and is wearing a pink top and black trousers.

Image by Laimonas Puysis

Pop music and true stories about youth, sex and gender.

Working with teenagers from Reykjavik, Iceland, the Teenage Choir of Love and Sex sing songs they have written themselves based on their own romantic and sexual experiences. They sing for themselves and each other. They sing for love, curiosity and heartbreak. They sing for every virgin, every slut and every thirsty bitch – so they never need to feel alone again.

Teenagers and music are made for each other. The songs we listen to in our youth, and the stories they tell, determine how we come to understand ourselves and the world around us, separating right from wrong. But what if all heteronormative pop songs were about something different? Based on stories told by youths, A Teenage Songbook of Love and Sex seeks new ways to talk and think about love, gender, and sex.

Concept and Creation: Ásrún Magnúsdóttir and Alexander Roberts

Musically directed and composed with: Teitur Magnússon

Co-authors and performers: Lísbet Sveinsdóttir, Marta Ákadóttir, Salóme Júlíusdóttir, Ísafold Kristín, Katla Sigurðardóttir Snædal, Kolfinna Ingólfsdóttir, Óliver Ali, Uloma Osuala, Una Barkadóttir, Karen Nordquist Ragnarsdóttir, Egill Andrason, Haukur Guðnason, Hanna Gréta Jónsdóttir, Sverrir Gauti Svavarsson og Karólína Einarsdóttir.

Choir-conductors: Sigríður Soffía Hafliðadóttir and Aron Steinn Ásbjarnarson

Premiered: Meteor Festival, BIT Teatergarasjen, Bergen, Norway and Reykjavík Dance Festival, Tjarnarbío, Reykjavík, Iceland.

Co-produced by: BIT Teatergarasjen, Teenagers in Reykjavík, Reykjavík Dance Festival, the Nordic Residency Platform, NORDBUK and apap – Performing Europe 2020 which is co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union

*THIS SHOW IS INCLUDED IN OUR TIERED DISCOUNT OFFER*

New for this year we’re offering a tiered discount on bookings for multiple shows, giving you savings whether you’re planning to attend just a handful or all of them. The more tickets you buy, the more you save.

Buy tickets for 6 shows =10% off
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Fierce Says

We first saw the work of Ásrún Magnúsdóttir way back in 2018 and we’ve been trying to work with her ever since. She creates brilliant participatory projects with different groups of people. Teenage Songbook, made with Alexander Roberts, is a joyous life affirming experience. Exuding agency, it's a privilege to have these teenagers perform for us.