< mannerisms >
Co-Choreographed
by Anna Gichan and Chella Man
This piece traces the evolution of body language in the span of five minutes. Both Man and Gichan both grew up deaf, relying heavily on visual cues to piece together information. As queer individuals, they were also shaped by projected expectations of femininity and the social pressure to perform it. Through intentional slips and grinds, the work explores the tension between conformity and assimilation. Moving from birth to puberty, the gestures culminate with a question:
How does your embodied movement speak to what you believe?
This piece visually depicts how gender is systematically ingrained in our society through a live performance featuring an all queer cast. The gender binary and expectations of performativity underlie all experiences in life creating a harmful foundational experience. Man - the prefix of the word alludes to the patriarchy. The suffix “-erism” in English is used to form nouns that refer to:
A practice, behavior, or characteristic associated with a particular person, group, or thing.
A doctrine, ideology, or system of beliefs tied to someone or something.
Mannerisms are not only the practice and system of beliefs of the subliminal gendered movements that we internalize, but they can also be ones we choose to subvert and reconstruct our own body language.