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. The performance is grounded in the idea that 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: for example, the deep-seated grief of not being able to imagine one’s own future when the gender assigned at birth does not align with one’s own perception, and when representations of non-binary growing up and aging are absent.

“mo(_)rning becomes them” also 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 and is realized in collaboration with sound designer Alina-Aljosha Anufrienko, the choir Transensemble, and with the support of TATWERK | performative Forschung.