Baroque Walks

In Baroque Walks, Beautiful Confusion turns a queer lens on Baroque aesthetics. Particularly in the Czech Republic, the Baroque is everywhere. Often, people are literally surrounded by it as they walk through the events of their everyday lives. Hiding in plain sight, the Baroque only needs a little encouragement to reveal its camp delights. That is if one can get through all the religious references. And the cherubs. Just what is up with the cherubs anyway?

Becka McFadden and Daniel Somerville – the team behind Black Dress – offer a playful and penetrating walk through the Baroque. Drawing on their complementary movement practices and shared butoh vocabulary, they invite the viewers on a flourish-filled stroll through Baroque music, architecture, sculpture, painting and landscape. Embracing the theatrical gender play of the period – epitomised by figures like the castrati or male actors of women’s roles – they reimagine the Baroque opera house as a nonbinary playground full of larger-than-life personalities, exuberant decoration, queer pathos, the tragi-camp and a healthy dose of euphoria.