Queer performance in times of the pandemic: movement, identity, and hope in heart2heart and The Ladder Project

Abstract

The queer body in its everyday performativity challenges the notions of the ‘normative everyday’. The intersection of race, gender, and sexuality as reflected upon within the spaces for rehearsals of the works of Toronto-based queer indigenous interdisciplinary artist Aria Evans speaks of identities and human relationships that defy the definition of the ‘normative’. heart2heart is a documentary archive of the work’s creative process that was halted due to the global pandemic. In the process that spanned over two years amidst the Covid-19 pandemic, the chosen applicants communicated through the medium of verbal and movement based expression to create art. The movements portrayed in its archive represent a sense of belonging, reflect upon how the lack of touch due to the pandemic has affected the mental health of the artists within the frames. The location of The Ladder Project is significant of the coming out of cramped rectangular boxes of digital screens, and of experimenting with how the human body moves on getting an opportunity to get out of a forced confinement and sensing the presence of touch after a prolonged lack of it. The word ‘isolation’ is important to understand how a dancer or a movement artist uses different parts of their bodies one at a time to reflect upon a varied range of emotions, both within a confined virtual space and a free wide physical natural landscape. The notion of ‘restricted’ or ‘closeted’ spaces frequently comes to our minds when we try to define queer spaces. Since the outbreak of the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic, our understanding of ‘restricted’ or ‘closeted’ spaces has shifted. Queering the mundane happens