DOGGYSTYLE

Solo Performance - 2018
Novi Sad, at Skcns Fabrika (Pokretnica Festival 2018) and Uferstudios Berlin
Choreography and Performance: Joma Richter
Outside Eye: Florian Feigl
Duration: 25 min
Working with Text from: Bell Hooks, "The Will to Change. Men, Masculinity and Love"

DOGGYSTYLE examines gender and masculinity within social norms and structures of power, approaching masculinity as a system rather than a fixed identity. I was interested in the performativity of machismo and the gestures, movements and codes through which it is constructed and reproduced. Language became part of the research, particularly clichés and conventions surrounding masculinity.

Working with movement material gathered through observation in Berlin and passages from bell hooks’ writing, I developed a movement practice exploring the sociological and choreographic dimensions of masculinity. As the process developed, my focus shifted from recognisable masculine gestures towards emotion, introspection and the bodily effects of emotional restriction. I investigated how emotion—or the absence of it—manifests in the body and how this can become a choreographic and compositional material.

The work questions the categories through which bodies and behaviours are organised. If we live within a system of boxes and drawers, who defines them and what belongs inside them? Doggystyle attempts to rearrange them.