Tanja Erhart (she/her), born in Austria 1983, currently based in London, defines herself as a white, queer and crip – disabled and chronically ill – dance artist, cultural anthropologist and intersectional pleasure activist. She co-created, facilitated and performed internationally contemporary dance with Claire Cunningham Projects, Michael Turinsky, Farah Saleh, Candoco Dance Company etc. and premiered her first dance piece and interactive dance film j_e_n_g_a with Katharina Senk in 2022. Tanja is curious exploring aesthetics of access in the movement of her own three bodyminds - with her wheelchair, with her crutches and one-legged without any assistive tools - and in collaborations with other divers bodyminds, while dismantling oppressive structures of ableism in dance through centring access and care, needs and desires of D/deaf, disabled, neurodiverse and chronically ill artists and audience members.
Sam Musy, *1990 born in Switzerland in a white upper-middle class family. He is non-binary, bisexual, autistic, schizophrenic. His studies in social sciences (and then cinema) where both interrupted, swept over by waves of illness. Stemmed from his hospitalizations experiences, Sam is now advocating for disability justice & transgender folk's rights. In 2021 he was guest performer in « Criptonite, Be Inspired ! » a show in Gessnerallee Zürich by the queer-crip theater company « Criptonite ». In 2022 he was in a workshop for crip & trans people in Nyon at BDQI. Art and activism intertwine in Sam's life in his passion for drag shows. Dance is freedom, he danced since he was a toddler and it's his favorite way to stim.
Project
The focus of this mentorship is to support the creation of Sam Musy’s artistic language, through a residency and online meetings with Tanja Erhart. Sharing experiences and strategies, they will work on choreography, dramaturgy and access.
Working from Sam’s personal experience and archives, the idea is to create multiple layers of true and fabulated stories, researching stigma, touch fatigue and pleasure.
Some of Sam’s questions include:
- How to find a home in your bodymind when you are confined in hospital?
- How to unmask safely?
- How to position oneself into the narrative imposed by the abled gaze?
- How to communicate and present myself in order to get into the venues and project I’m interested in?