Lifting Belly

"Lifting Belly" is funded by a Canada Council for the Arts Research and Creation Grant. It is a 100% queer and trans project involving 6 aerialists, a dramaturg, and a musician/composer. "Lifting Belly" responds to is and is backed by remixed excerpts from Gertrude Stein's experimental Modernist poem of the same title, set to a soundscape by Rory Jade Grey. Over an all-too-short 48 hours of studio research and creation time, we explored the role of the core in aerial, whose necessary strength belies the feminization of the art form as a whole. At the same time, we explored how the conventionally (hetero)sexualized (generally read as female bodies) core movements/techniques of aerial arts are changed and queered in the context of all queer performances, in which many of the performers are also gender non-conforming, thus queering both our relational dynamics and the erotics of the gaze.