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aGender

Helen Kindred & Maga Judd, The aGender Collective, 2020

aGender Collective was formed by dance artists Helen Kindred and Maga Judd in 2019 and forms a platform for their artistic work which is centred around and grows from their roles as mothers, mother-father, dancers, women living and working in London. As dancers and teachers they worked together for 5 years before forming the collective. Their work spans somatic movement education, contact improvisation and performance art practices and is underpinned by their belief in relationships of self, other, environment through movement and touch.

aGender is the current performance work of the collective, premiered at The Place London in Jan 2020. aGender is conceived through questions of gender, binaries and identity and birthed in movement in relationship with a rich musical composition from Alex Judd and lighting design by Mikkel Svak.

Two women facing eachother one blonde haired, the other red. The blonde haired dancer place hands on the shoulder of the red haired dancer and the red haired dancers has a facial expression of distress.
Middlesex University. Photography by Cheniece Warner.

"We have a strong belief that our performance is important and valuable in that it gives voice to issues around gender and feminity. Our work is strong and provocative and has a positive impact on the audience as it raises awareness of mothers in an artistic environment."

Middlesex University. Photography by C. Warner.

A dancer it a blue top is bend over cradling the head of a dancer in red who is on their knee. Both a faced to the right.
Dancers testing costume out. One is in downward facing dog with a skirt covering her torso.
Two dancers blurred in motion. Moving from standing the seated.
Middlesex University. Photography by Cheniece Warner.

Through a combination of release technique, contact improvisation and live music, our performance aims to provoke the audience into questioning their own habitual thinking surrounding gender and femininity. We will draw on the ideas of Judith Butler, a feminist philosopher, for inspiration. Judith proposed the idea of gender as a performative action, in which, as women, we learn to act towards ourselves and others in order to find ways we can transform and resist the ideas society projected on our bodies. The autobiographical, biological, social and cultural aspects of our lives influence our bodies. These aspects create the quality of our relations with others and with ourselves. The need for identity and recognition within society has an influence on the behaviors we choose to perform, and the way we present our physical being. In the age of social media, instagrammers and influencers, this is more relevant than ever.

Process

Ponderings from Dr. Helen Kindred, Maga Judd, Cheniece Warner, Abbie Jones & Rakhi Sachdev.

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