Letitia Pleiades

Letitia Pleiades’ practice spans object making, music production, DJing, movement, writing and teaching and is informed by studying and creating access to herbalism and bodywork. Their practice is a process of sharing knowledges and practices that might offer ways through.

For the club residency they will be making work about the experiences of people with bodies that can be read as anything other than cis male and how that relates to listening and intuition. In a culture where responsibility is laid at the feet of survivors of sexual violence, those who experience most of that violence are socialised to be on alert. The project explores the psychological traces and ripples that rape culture creates; speaking to the psychological confines that we live within when the perpetrator has gone, or when the perpetrator hasn’t been met – yet, in expectation that there will be one.

The performances will feature sonic and choreographic fragments of content associated with alarm: bells, rape alarms, sirens, freeze, shaking and will manipulate that content towards protection and joy.

PURINA ALPHA

My name is Purina Alpha and I’m a performance artist and Drag artist. In my dance practise I am inspired by chiefly contemporary, voguing and commercial dance, as well as African and Indian dance. I would class myself as both a drag queen and a performance artist and my performances incorporate both concepts. When I dance, I explore both the space around me and my own body, and the balance and the synchronicity I have with them. To me, that is the purpose of dance. One of the things I like to explore with performances alot, is unapologetically taking up space as a queer black woman, both socially and professionally. I have been creating work for club spaces since 2018, but with this residency I am planning to do something vastly different from any of my previous performances.

I will strengthen my knowledge of each dance style I’m inspired by using this opportunity and I look forward to being able to demonstrate my artistic potential. I’m planning on making a personal piece about recovering from trauma and learning to love myself. There will be segments incorperating contemporary dance and performance art, lively high-energy dance and drag lipsyncs.

NELLY KELLY

Sadmin is sad. He is a sad man. He makes music about his feelings. His partner left him. His dog left him. His friends left him. His parents left him. His kids left him. His house left him. Now he has nothing…but his sadness…and his banjo. Sadmin is a playful yet earnest drag exploration of the relationship between masculinity, tenderness and sadness, wrapped up in the humorous expression of the character of Sadmin, a masculine singer/songwriter celebrity superstar extraordinaire.

Sadmin draws upon the experiences of his creator, Nelly Kelly, as they navigate what it means to explore their own masculinity as an AFAB non-binary trans masc person, and the relation that masculinity has with being socially conditioned, pre-transition, as a woman. They use Sadmin to explore the potential of drawing on humour as a means of deconstructing the barriers between masculinity and sensitivity. Nelly Kelly is a drag artist, theatre maker and playwright. Across all mediums their work is inherently queer and predominantly seeks to present better representation of trans lives and bodies through performative means.