Queer Deportment
20/04/2024 - 20/04/2024
Production Details
Created and performed by Brendan Kydd, Hahna Briggs, Lisa Wilkinson
Pretty Gay Productions
Queer Deportment: kw-ear d-port-mint: To carry oneself in a gay way.
Pretty Gay Productions are back and popping up across the city this Saturday! Eleven years ago the stellar team of Hahna Briggs, Brendan Kydd and Lisa Wilkinson brought ‘Queer Deportment’ to the streets of Ōtepoti. Absurd, joyful, both challenging and a celebration – ‘Queer Deportment’ is back and reimagined for City Moves 2024!
WHEN Saturday 20 April
WHERE Catch them where you can!
💜 10.30am St Clair Esplanade
💙 12.30pm Meridian Mall
💚 2pm George Street
💛 6pm Octagon
COST Free!
City Moves is an open call, choreographic commission offered by Dance Ōtepoti to bring dance to public places and “accidental audiences”. It is a paid opportunity for a choreographer to create an accessible outdoor work to be enjoyed by the Ōtepoti public. City Moves 2024 is made possible with funding from Dunedin City Council and is free for the public to enjoy!
Link to the Facebook Event
Pretty Gay Productions on Instagram
Hahna Briggs is a Dunedin based dance artist, and parent to a two year old. Growing up in Oamaru, Hahna studied dance most of their life. After completing a Master in Dance Studies, Hahna went on to receive the Caroline Plummer Fellowship and establish GASP! Dance Collective (now GASP! Dance Trust). Hahna is proud to have been a founding member of Dunedin Pride and is now a life member of the organisation. In their other life, Hahna works in sexual violence prevention at the University of Otago as a Training and Development Coordinator.
Brendan Kydd currently lives in Meanjin (Brisbane) and is excited to be returning to his hometown for this project. Brendan is co-founder of Peachy Keen – a queer dance performance collective that can be found dancing up a storm on Brisbane’s vibrant queer scene. By day, Brendan teaches dance, gymnastics and well-being in schools across South East Queensland and his passions lie in the Performing Arts. He has also graced the musical theatre stages in Redcliffe Musical Theatre’s production of ‘Priscilla Queen of the Desert’ and Sunshine Coast’s Mad about Theatres ‘Chicago’.
Lisa Wilkinson has been dancing as a teacher, choreographer, and performer for 30 years. During her early years, she performed with companies in Ōtautahi including Dance Core, Scrambled Legs Physical Theatre Company, and her first company, which toured Europe and India in the mid-90s. After moving to Ōtepoti in 1998 and training as a Primary School Teacher and Performing Arts major, Lisa went on to establish Rasa School of Dance. After dedicating the last 20 years to building and growing this well-loved Dunedin icon, Lisa has decided it’s time to bring her personal practice back to the fore.
Street theatre , Dance ,
20 minutes
An ordinary morning turns into a queer festival
Review by Angela Trolove 20th Apr 2024
Loudspeakers, confetti and Pride explode on a grey St Clair beach, drawing an enthusiastic crowd and weaving in morning surfers fresh out of the sea.
Like the serendipity of chancing a flash mob, people luck in on sighting Queer Deportment (part of City Moves 2024, commissioned by Dance Ōtepoti) on St Clair Esplanade this morning.
Amplifiers with pop music draw people to the event. Brendan Kydd, Lisa Wilkinson and Hahna Briggs turn an ordinary morning into a queer festival, sporting bright primary colours and getting their crowd clapping to the beat. It goes from a chilly warm-up to a cinematic experience in no time in the hands of these assured dancers, dancers through and through, dancers having a damn good time, with the outdoor air blowing their hair like in a music video.
Wilkinson delivers melodramatic anguish to Taylor Swift’s Love Story, at the end slighting a hetero embrace with Kydd and sweeping into Briggs’ arms. Here’s comedy. Signs are handed to the audience and I love the queer agenda one, which includes ‘buy bread’. Political? Real. Kydd’s loud yellow outfit gives glimpses of thigh and his black tassels echo drag eyelashes. A vision.
A long strip of carpet becomes a catwalk and the requisite glittery fabrics like the night sky billow behind Wilkinson. Kydd lifts the loudspeaker . . . ‘Participation time.’ He invites the audience to dance, or to walk down the runway (and the way he says ‘walk’ is a dare, a dare to strut). People roll onto the runway to much encouragement and whooping, folks in togs and wetsuits raise their arms and wiggle down the runway, a girl in rollerblades steps down it . . . ‘That is camp,’ says Kydd.
Ongoing applause.
Overheard in the playground afterwards, one girl to her friend, ‘Did you see the dance? I got to go on the runway!!’
Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer
Comments