Harald Beharie: Batty Bwoy

Norwegian-Jamaican choreographer Harald Beharie comes to Berlin for the first time with a captivating solo driven by booming progressive rock.

Through a reappropriation of the Jamaican slang term for a queer person »Batty Bwoy« (literally, butt boy), the performance twists and turns the myths of the black queer body. From a perspective of play and desire, Harald Beharie scrutinizes the absurdity of queer monstrosity and evokes with Batty Bwoy an ambivalent being that exists in the threshold of joy, the precarious body and liberated power. Inspired by mythologies, disgusting stereotypes, feelings, fantasies of the queer body and identities, homophobic dancehall lyrics, 1970s Giallo films from Italy, resilient »gully queens,« and queer voices in Norway and Jamaica, Harald Beharie creates an ambivalent and tense work between tenderness and cruelty.

Foto: Julie Hrncirova