Harald Beharie (NO)
Batty Bwoy
BATTY BWOY both attacks and embraces the fixed image of the homosexual body as perverse and deviant. In a riveting performance, Harald Beharie creates an ambivalent being that is both sensitive and charmingly cruel. Let yourself be swept away by the unleashed power, joy and wild batty energy!
Please note: This performance contains nudity, is sexually explicit and contains loud sounds. Recommended age of audience: 18+ years
Through a reappropriation of the Jamaican term “ Batty Bwoy” (litteraly, butt boy), slang for a queer person, the work twists and turns myths 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 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 horror 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” won the Hedda Award for best dance performance 2023 and was nominated for the Norwegian Critics Association Prize 2022.
Batty Bwoy is a solo performance in collaboration with Karoline Bakken Lund, Veronica Bruce, Jassem Hindi and Ring van Mobius.
The project is a co-production with Dansens Hus, Oslo and RAS, Sandnes and premiered January 20th, 2022.
LANGUAGE:
The performance is non-verbal.
Reviews
“Harald Beharies’s “Batty Bwoy” etches itself into the memory.”
– Klassekampen
“Batty Bwoy is a rare physical tour de force. An artistic and political statement (…) The situations, images and composition are refreshing in a dance context. The choice of prog-rock music gives a rawness and shamelessness that suits the performance.”
– Norsk Shakespearetidsskrift (read review – in Norwegian)
“It’s bold and impressive. (…) There is something hypnotically virtuosic about Harald Beharie’s movements. The choreography is performed with an intensity that makes it interesting to follow every detail of how the body handles the movements. He takes over the space in a way that sometimes takes my breath away. (…) After watching Harald Beharie dance, I question whether concepts like feminine and masculine make sense. His body and movements transcend gender categories and characteristics (…) But most of all, the focus is on the human being as a physiological being, and although I understand the gender negotiations that take place, I feel that the physical performance transcends it all.”
Scenekunst.no (read review – in Norwegian)
Batty Bwoy at Bora Bora is specially supported by the Danish Arts Foundation’s international grants
Credits
Choreography & Performer
Harald Beharie
Scenography & Sculpture:
Karoline Bakken Lund
Veronica Bruce
Music:
Ring van Möbius
Sound Designer:
Jassem Hindi
Outside Eye:
Ines Belli
Hooman Sharifi
Co-producers:
Dansens Hus
RAS
Supported by:
Norwegian Art Council
Fond for lyd og bilde
FFUK
Sandnes Kommune
Tou Scene
Photos:
Julie Hrncirova
Margot Sparkes
Pietro Bertora
Thanks to:
Tobias Leira
Ingeborg Staxrud Olerud