HYBRIS: CHOREOGRAPHING WHITENESS

The dance performance explores  how I (Jonas Øren) have created and continue to create “Jonas”, both on stage and in everyday life. “Jonas” aspires to be fierce and effortless in language and movement through a blend of performative expressions. His whiteness is shaped and choreographed based on an understanding of sexuality, gender, identity, and origin that are both fortifying and damaging. «Whiteness and white racialized identity refer to the way that white people, their customs, culture, and beliefs operate as the standard by which all other groups of are compared*».

*The National Museum of African American History and Culture
(https://nmaahc.si.edu/learn/talking-about-race/topics/whiteness)

To me, this expression is a blend of a physical presentation and a language I refer to as effortless and fierce which at the same time shows impressions of resistance and an essential rebuilding of the self. It is a reaction to the fact that the queer man’s and the Black female’s bodies traditionally are devalued. In what ways does resistance nourish a physical sense of community and a form of self- staging production? How does this shape identity and whiteness, and how does this contribute to exposing inequalities between the black female authors and the dancing, self-staging man? Is the casual conflation of a white gay male’s experience with that of black women appropriation, not solidarity? What can cultural appreciation look like without appropriation

Credits:

Head of project, choreographer and performer:
Jonas Øren

Dramaturg:
Jessica Lauren Elisabeth Taylor

Light design and -engineering:
Yasin Gyltepe

Producer:
Ingeborg Husbyn Aarsand

Artistic guidance:
Thomas Talawa Prestø, Cherish Menzo, Lars Vaular

Contributors:
Camara Lundestad Joof, Fatumata Kamara, Regina Tucker,

Outer eye:
Deise Nunez.