With Violets in Her Lap
Company:
Julian Donahue
With Violets in Her Lap is my embodied search for queer ancestry. The AIDS crisis is said to have ended in 1997, the year I was born, over 15 years of government inaction and murderous queerphobia. Almost 30 years later, we have a health secretary who cuts HIV funding, wants to ban HIV preventative medications, and doesn’t believe HIV causes AIDS. This show honors the lineage of artists lost to AIDS, and all those who flourished during the destruction of the crisis, just as we now are challenged to do. Drawing on my experience in classical ballet, historical dance forms, and contemporary dance, this show is a collage that evokes the idea that through a danced ritual we can embody our cultural ancestors, the gay and queer people who we may not be related to biologically, but who we are related to in culture, in resistance, in aesthetics, in the search for beauty, sex, and freedom. With Violets in Her Lap is a one man show told through dance, show in 2 acts with a 10 minute intermission between.
