Olympia Bukkakis, replay

Link to performance: mediathek.hfbk.net/lecture2go-portlet/player/iframehttps://mediathek.hfbk.net/lecture2go-portlet/player/iframe?v=512

Queen of the Heavens and of the Earth, Empress of Despair, Architect of Your Eternal Suffering, Olympia Bukkakis will present a showing of her most recent research. replay is a new work inspired by the relationship between movement and sound in sub-, high-, and pop-cultural contexts. Classical music, drag shows, and music videos are blended together in an attempt to find a way of relating sound and movement that is sophisticated and entertaining without being alienating, tacky, or boring. Who knows if it’ll work? Come and find out.

Olympia Bukkakis is a drag queen, choreographer, moderator, and writer living and working in Berlin. She began performing while completing a B.A. in social theory at Melbourne University in Australia and kick-started the local alternative drag scene with her party Pandora’s Box. At the same time she collaborated with queer theater company Sisters Grimm on a number of projects. Since moving to Berlin in 2012, she has organized, curated, and moderated various queer performance nights including Get Fucked, Fancy, Apocalypse Tonight, and Queens Against Borders. In 2017 she began to perform in contemporary dance and performance contexts, collaborating with Jeremy Wade and Daniel Pfluger, among others. In 2019 she completed a masters in solo dance authorship at the Inter-University Centre for Dance (HZT) in Berlin with her graduation piece Tales from a State of Shemergency. Since then she has premiered a number of new works, including Gender Euphoria (2019), Work on Progress (2019), Under Pressures (2019), A Touch of the Other (2020), and Too Much (2021). As well as performing, moderating, and giving workshops, Olympia has published a number of writing pieces. “Gender Euphoria: Trans and Nonbinary Identities in Drag” was published by Bloomsbury as part of Contemporary Drag Practices and Performers: Drag in a Changing Scene. A polemic titled “A Case for the Abolition of Men” will soon be available through the HKW, Berlin. Her practice is situated within, and inspired by, the tensions and intersections between queer nightlife and contemporary dance and performance.