This is my coming out.
CW. Sexual violence mention, transphobia.
Video by Celia Sagastume
Under quarantine, the world as we knew it hangs suspended - bracing for the incoming wave of change. Thrust from proscenium, stripped bare of sound, audience, income - what is dance now but deep longing? Everything we knew is canceled. And artists have always been the ones to usher in a new world. I’ve lost the world beneath my feet once before. I am well practiced in creation under constraint. We greet the unknown together, a new and barren stage.
"Illegible" embodies the struggle to be seen and recognized as human.
The audio collages hatemail Daria received from his family in an attempt to stop him from medically transitioning (in translation from Russian). Their visceral horror is a counterbalance to increasing momentum of his physical transformation. Daria's amorphous choreography, inspired by the shifting forms starling flocks, reflects the incomprehensibility of transsexual bodies under the scrutiny of the cisgender gaze.