Ludwigs
Burg
Festival

Cinematic glimpses of »Somewhere in Between«

An exploration of gender identities

Over the course of a month, nine young people between the ages of 20 and 30 came together for six online workshops lasting several hours and dealt intensively with diverse gender identities and perceptions through writing tasks, movement sequences and free exchange. A filmic insight into the work can be seen on the digital stage.

How diverse are gender identities? Where does discrimination against trans or non-binary people hide or reveal itself in everyday life? How can the preoccupation with one's own gender identity be expressed in dance and movement? Nine young people who identify as trans, non-binary or cis addressed these and other questions on an intellectual, emotional and artistic level. Originally, the workshops for »Somewhere in Between« would have taken place in physical community at the Kunstzentrum Karlskaserne, but were moved to the digital space due to corona. The participants and the team (director and choreographer Gary Joplin, set designer Birgit Holzwarth and dramaturge Nadja Rüde) were positively surprised by the strong group feeling and the intimate, familiar atmosphere that quickly developed despite the online format. Gary Joplin has previously worked on this topic in Freiburg in a similar way as he did in Ludwigsburg. And yet, with each group, new insights and input emerge. For example, the original workshop subtitle »An exploration of the third gender« was dropped because the broad spectrum of gender identities does not have (binary) poles and thus does not include a »third gender«. Within the safe framework created by Gary Joplin, the young people were able to share, discuss and creatively process their own experiences. In the process, previous dance experience was on the one hand mixed, but on the other hand not relevant at all. It was all about the very individual body language and dance as a means of expression. In the resulting film the participants Balthazar, Carina, Felicitas, Justus, Kit, Lu, Marlene, Robin and Theresa give an insight into the past workshop.