Batty Bwoy

Through a reappropriation of the Jamaican term ‘Batty Bwoy’ (literally: butt boy, slang for a queer person), the work twists and turns myths to invoke demonic sensitivities and charming cruelties, unfolding vulnerable possibilities in an interplay of consciousness and naivety. The horror and joy of Batty Bwoy, inherent to queer blackness, is unmasked.

Scrutinizing the absurdity of a queer monstrosity, Batty Bwoy articulates the porosity of bodies and languages, their mouths swallowing and regurgitating the corporal fictions projected onto their skins.

Batty Bwoy attacks and embraces sedimented narratives around the fear of the queer body as a perverse and deviant figure. The expression "Batty Bwoy" is used to evoke an ambivalent creature that exists in the threshold of the precarious body, liberated power, joy and batty energy!

The work has found inspiration in mythologies, disgusting stereotypes, feelings and fantasies of the queer body and identities, homophobic dancehall lyrics, 70s Giallo films from Italy, resilient “gully queens” and queer voices in Norway and Jamaica that have visited and taken part of the process.

Harald Beharie(he/they) is a Norwegian-Jamaican performer and choreographer based in Oslo, Norway. Harald's choreographic practice are collaborative voyages, navigating through realms of ambiguity and phantasm, punctuated by themes of construction and deconstruction, hope and uncertainty, disinterest and emotional intensity. They hold a special interest for the DIY and vulnerability of being in the unknown. In a quest to dissect established corporeal and bodily narratives their work celebrate a spectrum of embodiment—ranging from the pathetic to the ecstatic, the collapsing to the exuberant, the faltering to the tenacious while fostering a deliberate naiveté and queer playfulness. Haralds focus is being with local people, local ideas, and developing ideas with and within the community.

Haralds work has received nominations for the Norwegian Critics Association prize for the performances Shine Utopians with Louis Schou (2020) and the solo work Batty Bwoy (2022). In 2023 Batty Bwoy won the Hedda prize for “best dance production”.