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SSSHHHH!!!! SOMETHING IS MOVING IN THE BUSHES! Something artificial? Something gorgeous? Something monstrous? Something natural?
Little Miss Beast Mode is a 35-minute dance performance that explores the promise of queer ecology through somatic and performative processes of de- and re-humanisation. Accompanied by a 3-meter bullwhip and music created by São Paulo-based composer TUCY (Lucas Torrez) the dancer trashes through dance historical references and bestial apparitions to sus out the genealogy of performed monstrosity. When is a dancing body considered foul, alien and bestial? What happens to the perception of a dancing body when the choreography pushes the performer to oscillate between these presupposed extremities? Who sets the standards of perception and what are the socio-political implications of such research?
From The Dying Swan to Nordic Jazz Dance to a bullwhip stuck in time, Little Miss Beast Mode asks how ‘nature’ can be conceptualised and practiced as performative material. In the midst of a judeo-christian heritage that proposes a natural order based on darwinian cis-heteronormativity, Little Miss Beast Mode ponders on the queer potentials of re-articulating ecology through somatic performance. What happens when nature is articulated from a position denied access to the so-called “natural"? What role does the body play in performing said nature? How gay can it get? -
Choreography and performance: Andreas Haglund
Musical Composition: TUCY (Lucas Torrez)
Light Design: Will Zawistowski
Choreographic assistant: Sara Grotenfelt
PR Photos: Ville Vidø
Outside Eye: Stina EhnSupported by: William Demant Fonden, Svenska Kulturfonden, Finnish Cultural Foundation, Dance is Ancient
Residencies: MDT, Udviklingsplatformen, Dance Cooperative, Tårnby Park Studios -
February 2025: Performed at SP Escola de Teatro in São Paulo, Brazil.
January 2025: PREMIERE at Det Frie Felts Festival
November 2024: Work-In-Progress showing at Dance Is Ancient Malmö -
SSSHHHH!!!! SOMETHING IS MOVING IN THE BUSHES! Something artificial? Something gorgeous? Something monstrous? Something natural?
Little Miss Beast Mode dances in the blur between animals and humans, between the natural and the supernatural, the organic and the artificial. Choreographer and dance artist Andreas Haglund moves through a cavalcade of creatures, tracing the ideological tensions behind staged biomimicry. What ideas of nature do portrayals of the natural world reveal? And who is welcome in that very nature?In Little Miss Beast Mode an array of grotesque, confused and unhinged beasts frollick through the hazy maze of the black box. These constantly transforming apparitions sniff out the promises of queer ecology. What happens when nature is articulated from a position denied access to the so-called "natural"?
With the crack of a whip, Little Miss Beast Mode snaps through the rigid confines of this supposed naturality, leaving behind a wild mesh of beasts that dance out a world where nature is anything but fixed. Something is really moving in the bushes.
PR Photos taken by Ville Vidø
Video documentation of the Premiere of the piece. That took place on Januray 18th at Aveny-T during Det Frie Felt Festival (Festival of the Free Scene) in Copenhagen Denmark.
Filmed by Jacob Linholdt, edited by Oliver Reddersen.
Photos taken during the performance at SP Escola de Teatro in São Paulo, Brazil. Photos taken by Clara Silva.
Photos from the Premiere at Aveny-T during Det Frie Felts Festival in Copenhagen, Denmark
Photos by Arthur Aizikovich