Big Trouble

Abstract

Dancers rise and melt, breath-driven, selfishly internal, and painfully slow. Suddenly one gasps for air, launching an arm that drives their chest upward in a moment of desperate ecstasy before slinking quietly back down to a puddle on the floor. Another dancer throws themself skyward, twisting and contorting, the sound of rushing air whistling into their lungs. The cacophony builds, bodies and limbs soaring and slipping and catching and seeping with increasing violence as they claw their way back to life. Almost contagious, groans overlap, creating haunting rhythms over the throbbing chaos thrown from the space’s speakers. One by one, dancers quiet their breath to settle on their bellies in a defensive line. Looking ahead at the audience with hungry eyes, they crawl and claw their way forward, nearly crashing into the front row of chairs, only to reach their greedy mouths upward. Jaws stretch and warp. Sternums crack open and ribs splay apart. Their insatiable appetite demands attention as it builds to a feverish peak before the lights black out and the space is returned to stillness.

Big Trouble argues for an earnest investigation of the often toxic norms driving our lives and the ways that we move. Through my choreographed and written research, I seek to question the stasis of tradition and propose queer studies as a catalyst for rethinking how dance is made, performed, and consumed. In this thesis I analyze how drag king performances destabilize heteropatriarchal masculinity by exposing its choreographies and the arbitrary semiotics of power attributed to masculine ways of moving. I utilize drag king performances as a case study of the power that queer values have in disrupting heteronormative movement conventions, by actively replacing them with sapphic values like consent, self-authorship, and playful rebellion. Ultimately, this thesis argues that queer studies and queer conceptions of identity performance offer vital tools for expansive dance analysis and ethical, consensual co-creation.