Majesty Royale
- Fellow 2020
- Dancer and performance maker from North Carolina (USA)
- Cooperating partner: Gerard & Kelly (Paris, France)
Majesty Royale (preferred pronouns: they/them) is a dancer and performance maker from North Carolina (USA), fashioning an alternate and ecstatic present/future condition for Black queer bodies to inhabit. Their work says yes to open sexuality. No to shame. Yes to incorrect grammar and choices in vernacular. Yes to their sissy walk. No to the violence of code switching and yes to the multiplicity of self. No to distilled, replaceability. Yes to their body and yes to rest. Their work is a space for ghosts: phantoms, fantasy, fiction, freedom, fluctuation, flaming, futurism, flyness.
Majesty started cooperating with artmaking partners Brennan Gerard and Ryan Kelly, known as Gerard & Kelly. Their cooperation was centered around a new chapter of their ongoing project Modern Living, which explores intimacy and domestic space within legacies of modernist architecture. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Majesty had to cancel their original fellowship plans.
In a new attempt, Majesty started a cooperation with movement and conceptual artist keyon gaskin. Majesty summarizes their experiences from the digital exchange in their final fellowship report.
Majesty's Reports
„Majesty Royale recently graduated in dance at UArts, Philadelphia, and represent the next generation of artists willing to leave their comfort zone to follow their trajectory to discover. Their cooperation with Gerard & Kelly will give them the opportunity to experience the professional production of a choreographic work as well as to participate actively in a transversal research on queer liveness, exposure, intimacy and occupancy. The personal, political and artistic combine in exciting and original ways in their work and this cooperation may open new doors for all the artists and for their audiences in the future.“
- Jury Statement