SKINNED (2022) is a movement-based performance where emilyn embraces a physicality of queering, as a process of transformation, in/visibility, becoming, not being. SKINNED is a choreographic score, co-created by emilyn claid and Heidi Rustgaard, performed by emilyn to commissioned sound by Planningtorock. emilyn works with an immense piece of fur and latex skin, which acts as camouflage, cloak and animal hide. Spectators watch from within the space. Cruising and crumbling, emilyn interacts with spectators seductively, with a performing presence that teases with their external gaze. SKINNED also forms part of emilyn's full length work UNTITLED.
what the press says
"Emilyn Claid’s SKINNED (above) was anything but sweet. In fact, it was unnerving. Created in collaboration with Rustgaard, it was a fearless, often ferocious solo piece danced in a sort of wolfskin among the audience, at one moment confronting us nose-to-nose, eyes staring into ours with a predatory glint, the next breaking into an embracing smile of amiability and even complaisance. It was an amazing performance by a veteran dance practitioner who, I wasn’t surprised to learn later, is also a psychotherapist. It was definitely not for the faint-hearted." Miles Hedley
“Under more blue light, an electrifying song composed for Claid by Planningtorock fills the auditorium as she punches upwards beneath the wolfskin, an upturned sentry of animal desire – in Nightwood, 1937, writes Djuna Barnes, ‘Sometimes one meets a woman who is beast turning human’. When she performed Skinned – the collaboration with Rustgaard – last year at Fest en Fest, a festival of expanded choreography, Claid swung the wolfskin around the space at APT Gallery in Deptford, knocking off someone’s glasses in a glorious herding sweep.” Tom Hastings, Art Monthly
Emilyn Claid brings her magnetic presence and seductive interplay of identities back to the stage after 22 years with her solo Untitled. Reflective, humorous and unbelievably moving, she avoids a big Diva entrance but dazzles differently. Learning how to perform again as a mature, queer dancer, she teases and thrills as she eases into her changing body. In many ways Untitled is the process of accepting and enjoying transformation and it’s riveting. Josephine Leask, Dance Art Journal