Resistance

A Sense of Shifting heralds a change — but this change feels heavy in the hand. The book is massive, almost unwieldy. Instead of being flipped through casually, its weight compels one to pause, grasp it with both hands, and turn the pages with deliberation. Edited by New York-based author Coco Romack and photographer Yael Malka, it brings together photographic and essayistic insights into the artistic processes of twelve queer choreographers and companies. At a time when queer narratives are increasingly visible and, at the same time, still or again under political threat, A Sense of Shifting is not only an aesthetic but also a cultural-political statement: The photographs document poses of empowerment, diverse physicalities, and revolutionary deconstructions of dance traditions. They provoke questions about visibility, working conditions, and change. But what needs to be changed? The subtitle reveals it: Queer Artists Reshaping Dance.

Deconstructing the Dichotomy
But wait a minute: Think Nijinsky, Léonide Massine, or Balanchine's Orpheus, whose queer implications Steven Ha explored in Dance Chronicle in 2022! Dance has never been untouched by queer perspectives — rather, its decidedly queer legacy has often remained invisible. This is because the line didn't fit into the heteronormative tradition and the dominant narratives that still often cling to rigid, traditional ideas of form, technique, and aesthetics. Yet these very norms exclude all those who don't fit into this rigid framework. A Sense of Shifting is dedicated to artists who disrupt these traditional ideas — their bodies defy traditional patterns, and their works open up new, exciting possibilities for what dance can be.

Even a quick flick through the pages reveals a kaleidoscope of diverse facets of queerness in dance: steely thighs wrap around gleaming poles, the flowing fabric of flamenco dresses whips through the air as they spin, soft flesh meets hard steel structures, a body lies across a wheelchair in another person's lap. While certain dance styles like voguing or pole dancing are strongly associated with the queer community, it often goes unnoticed that other genres also open up queer perspectives — even if, at first glance, they seem stuck in traditional patterns and structures. Suddenly, as I flip through the pages, my hand rests on another, which in turn rests on another. In the photograph: two people tightly entwined. Their hands intertwine, almost merging with the fabric of the cowboy jeans. At first, the scene seems familiar, almost natural — until a pleasant glitch à la Brokeback Mountain creeps in: The male-read hands, which presumably had to lead for years in the tradition of line dancing, give in to the lead. A genre like Country Western prescribes sexualities and thus excludes realities of life. Yet, within the scene, festivals like Sundance Stompede in San Francisco, the annual “Country-Western Dance Weekend for the LGBTQ community, are establishing themselves. They offer a space to question the power play of leading and following in couples' dance with regard to gender.

While the look for men at Sundance Stompede continues to be characterized by boots, lots of jeans, and a shirt, with their flamenco dresses, the Compañía Manuel Liñán not only addresses the traditional clothing of female dancers, but also their movements: "It was clear that you could not do the woman's movements," says Liñán, describing eccentric hand movements that are clearly only intended for female dancers, thus showing how each dance technique shapes the body in a very specific way. This is particularly true of ballet which prescribes clear body definitions and follows a binary ideal of female lightness and male power. Katy Pyle and her New York-based company Ballez deconstruct this dichotomy in a long process of "learning, unlearning, and searching for the right words within the genre." For them, it's about reversing heteronormative structures in order to individually take possession of the movements.

While in some genres you have to fight for a queering of old traditions, Butoh, even in its original form, questions any fixed identity. This is why the style, which developed in 20th-century Japan, has become a welcome refuge for many LGBTQ+ artists. According to Coco Romack, it breaks with conventional forms of representation. Contrary to the traditional image of queerness — everything light and colorful! — the artist Xue Rose allows a purity to emerge from the darkness of the body: "When I first started doing butoh, I would describe it as unscripting the socialized body — rewriting a lot of these codes and modes of understanding that we've inhabited." Queerness is not exclusively related to gender and sexuality, but for queer theorist Antke Engel, it is above all a form critical of domination that creates multidimensional fluidity in its aesthetic and political practice. For Cassandre Joseph, artistic co-director of the company STREB Extreme Action, which has already been shown in Germany, the task is to resist predetermined forms and give space to marginalized people who want to revolt against them.

Visibility and Transformation
Providing space requires having the space. The dance collective MasterZ at Work Dance Family, led by Black trans femme choreographer Courtney Washington Balenciaga, a legend of the ballroom community, rehearses in Brooklyn's Fulton Park if necessary. Although the ballroom community is celebrated as the epitome of queerness, structural support is lacking. Behind the art lie livelihoods that are threatened with failure, especially when queer spaces like Alejandro's Night in Los Angeles are closed and transmasculine pole dancers of color like Diamond Prince fear being excluded from the industry. However, the question of visibility also arises with regard to the book and its editors. While they portray diverse perspectives, they focus heavily on mostly established artists trained in the US or Europe.

In the pursuit of queer visibility, it can be liberating to feel embodied, but at the same time, the artist Tosh Basco also sees the danger of powerlessness and stigmatization: "I don't have control over how people encounter me. They're going to see what they see. I can't hide my brownness, I can't hide my transness." Another artist evades physical visibility, concealing her identity as a Black queer performer: NIC Kay in a bear costume on the beach. In the spirit of glitch feminism according to Legacy Russell, which challenges constructs such as sexuality, ethnicity, gender, and ability, Kay's strategy of non-performance defies any legibility and forges her own identity. Alice Sheppard and Laurel Lawson, aka duo Kinetic Light, do not want their disability* to be reduced to an identity category, but view queerness as intersectional. In their practice, they investigate which themes queerness brings to the surface and which potential transformations become apparent in the process.

A Sense of Shifting may appear like a conservative, almost sober queer dance bible in its layout, but its content is anything but drab. Especially in times of increasing normalization of right-wing extremist ideologies, it should be on every living room table — as a gospel, so to speak, offering support, hope, and inspiration for resistance. Yael Malka's photographs capture the respective dynamics so precisely that they become almost tangible and physically palpable. Where questions remain unanswered, Coco Romack addresses them in texts and interviews — only to simultaneously open up new perspectives on the images. The book makes one thing abundantly clear: Queerness doesn't just mean being queer, but also deeply illuminating the themes and questions that accompany it —visibility, transformation, and the exploration of social norms.

Coco Romack, Yael Malka: A Sense of Shifting. Queer Artists Reshaping Dance, Chronicle Books, San Francisco 2024;
www.chroniclebooks.com