Dying Swans and Dragged Up Dames

Abstract

This chapter explores my practice work with co-creator Professor Helen Newall, Dying Swans and Dragged Up Dames (2013, 2014). The work consisted of a collection of parodic images which disrupt representations of the pioneers of modern dance and icons of classical ballet: Moira Shearer, Martha Graham, Rudolf Nureyev, Vaslav Nijinsky, Anna Pavlova. I engage in theoretical analysis relating to queer theory and camp (Butler, Bodies That Matter. London: Routledge, 1993; Halberstam, The Queer Art of Failure. North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2011; Sontag, ‘Notes on Camp’ in A Susan Sontag Reader. Harmondsworth: Penguin. pp. 105–119, 1983). In terms of subjectivity, I explore how my own maturing body renegotiates both fatness and age, which results in a rejection of the previous codified techniques. I explore the documentation of the visual images themselves, which offer, arguably, a longer shelf-life than a performance output to a spectator.