mo(_)rning becomes them

mo(_)rning becomes them is a vulnerable yet playful encounter between dance and text that approaches queer grief in the context of non-binary transitioning. Both grief and transition are processes that resist linear logics and instead challenge us to continually explore and shift boundaries - those we experience within ourselves as well as those imposed on us by society.

In contrast to the narrow limits of binary understandings of gender, mo(_)rning becomes them traces a loosening of gendered assignment while celebrating a non-binary transition. In doing so, the performance creates space for forms of grief that may accompany transition. mo(_)rning becomes them starts from the assumption that grief and transition are often experienced individually, and sometimes even in isolation, even though they unfold within social structures. In this sense, the performance is an attempt to bring these experiences into a collective space. 

The audience is invited to read the English text together, thereby actively shaping the performance itself. Between dance, storytelling, and collective reading aloud, the bodies and voices of the performer and the audience intertwine into a network that invites participants to carry one another and to be carried.

mo(_)rning becomes them is an intermediate stage of a longer artistic research process. 

A work-in-progress by Aru Ray Tormann. The showing is produced by TATWERK.
Part of the research was funded by the Tanzpraxis 2024–25 scholarship.