How do we perform power, pleasure and gender as a seductive presence?

This workshop draws on Emilyn Claid’s extensive experience of performance, choreography and performed ambiguities of gender and desire, and will explore cruising as a performance of relational presence and seduction.

Cruising – Like playing hunter and hunted, where the power and pleasure is in the physicality of the hunt.

Cruising – A sustained practice of seductive relational exchange in performance

Cruising – Working with the physicality of power, pleasure, seduction, ambiguity, cool, desire, femininity, masculinity and androgyny in performance. (Androgyny, not as neutrality, but as an ambiguous trans-ing across the arc of gendered performances)

Each day will include: a physical workout following somatic principles; live art tasks and movement improvisation; discussion of seduction and gendered ambiguity in performance; embodied work with the qualities of power and pleasure; making performances, cruising scores between performers, and between performers and spectators.

Who is this for?
The workshop welcomes participants who:
– feel confident to move physically
– feel confident to perform for each other and for audience
– open to discuss a wide range of perspectives on gender’s qualities in movement
– happy to experiment and take risks with embodied expressions of power and pleasure
– interested in choreography and performance.
– embrace queerness

Image credit: emilyn claid and Heidi Rustgaard, SKINNED, Venice International Performance Art Week 2024. Photography by Lorenza Cini.