The Gender Performance

The latter half of this decade has witnessed a resurgence of artists enjoying mainstream success while defying gender categorisation. Although not an entirely new phenomenon, what is new this time around is that they are allowed, or warrant, an openness about who they are. Being ‘closeted’ was a big part of the music business in the eighties often leading to sad, troubled personal lives of artists like, for example, Dusty Springfield or gender bending Boy George, who was all right as long as he didn’t talk about it. In recent years a new generation of subtle subversives are making their mark on the arts and music scene. Heralding a return to passion and vulnerability in their work, they may use costuming and make-up to dramatic effect, yet their performances are not about pretending, but rather about exposing themselves. In a world where gender distinctions are blurred, our idea of artifice is turned on its head and comes to equal a kind of honesty. Performers like Theo Adams, Antony Hegarty or Bianca Casady (one half of sister-duo CocoRosie) – open, free, and fluid of gender – challenge our conventional ideas about male and female, bringing a new understanding of identity and the beauty of being true.

Since leaving formal education at the tender age of 15, Theo Adams (also known as The-O) has been making waves of the tidal variety on the Performance Art scene. His productions are hard to sum up by the limited medium of type on paper, but characteristically include elements of the following (in no particular order): queer cabaret, eighties power ballads, contemporary dance, the philosophies of Judith Butler, Celine Dion, and about a ton of glitter. By his own admission, Theo started out with “no qualifications and began performing in dark gay sex clubs in Vauxhall at five in the morning.” A few years on, however, he now heads up the Theo Adams Company, consisting of a troupe of dancers, singers, musicians and other theatrical types, and has staged productions at the Tate Britain, Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, the finale of the NY Art Book Fair in New York, and URA! in Istanbul.

“I knew from an early age what my role in the world was and I wouldn’t let anyone get in the way,” he answers when questioned on his precocious determination. “I don’t believe in any limitations.” It is most likely this disregard for set definitions and boundaries, which are key to describing Theo’s performances and also lend the cathartic quality for which they have become known. In an interview with ponystep.com, writer Rachel Newsome likens Theo to Tiresias, the soothsayer character from Greek literature, who is fully man and fully woman. “I truly believe gender is fluid,” the performer, who began with lipstick as a three-year old, explains “I am of the male sex but my gender is completely fluid. I don’t see myself as masculine or feminine and I don’t see those things as important. If I want to wear a pair of heels it’s because I like the way they look, not because I want to look like a ‘woman’.” That some people find the concept hard to get their heads around – let alone be enlightened by – is clear. A boy/man in feminine get-up must equal transvestism; transvestism is linked to camp culture, and ‘camp’ is, due to its “love of the unnatural: of artifices and exaggeration (Susan Sontag: Notes On Camp, 1964) a sensibility not to be taken seriously. Theo couldn’t disagree more: “Camp for me is a way of describing the extreme. That’s why I find the idea of camp so attractive. Things with a camp sensibility have no boundaries, they take the spirit or idea and run wild with them; there are no half-measures.”

Autodidact Theo is frank on his reluctance to distinguish between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture, believing, for example, the emotionally manipulative quality of a power ballad to be a redeeming feature, and favouring a direct way of influencing an audience. This eschewal of irony comes as an unbelievably refreshing arrival, particularly to a public weary of two decades of an irony-laden pop culture. He challenges our readiness to dismiss things as ‘cheesy’, urging people to be less concerned with taste (“I think the idea of taste is so boring”) and in so doing, opens us up to a true – albeit at times intense – emotionality.

A rare vulnerability and raw emotionality – aside, of course, from genius talent – is what has brought musical sensation and controversial Mercury Prize winner Antony Hegarty, described by friend and collaborator Rufus Wainwright as “a real underground downtown institution”, into the world of mainstream success. At the centre of all the excitement is his voice, an exceptional instrument capable of reducing its listeners to tears within a quivering couplet. His extraordinary singing voice, which he claims is the result of many years’ work and natural evolution, is entirely genderless and could just as well belong to a white man as a black woman. That Antony himself defies categorisation is no secret. All interviews and features make reference to his stature (both tall and broad) and how at odds it is with the shy, gentle, even vulnerable energy he projects. Givenchy’s Riccardo Tisci, who recently created a bespoke haute couture ensemble for Antony’s upcoming tour, describes him as not having a specific sexuality; “he’s beyond everything that people could think.” On the subject of a transgender body in an interview, Antony’s resolve is: “You could think God played a trick on you, or you could think that culture and society played a trick on you in thinking there isn’t room for you. Well, there is.”

The album I Am A Bird Now is unequivocally a very personal album, delving into areas of gender and sexuality that could leave the average listener feeling strangely uninformed. On the other hand, there is the undeniable yearning in his voice and sentiments relating to body-dysmorphic issues or fears of dying alone are relatable, if not universal. That Antony is able to furnish these themes with such a heightened emotional quality is likely testament to his experiences as transgender. And his wide appeal can, in turn, be seen to signal something positive about the psyche of the general public, which is somehow proven more open-minded than generally given credit for. Although more established and from an entirely different generation, Antony mirrors Theo’s positivism about the present climate as well as the future, often citing younger musicians as Devendra Banhart or CocoRosie as examples of people with a new optimism on the world and the ability to change things.

“Those kids, people like Devendra Banhart, Joanna Newsom, Bianca and Sierra, ushered in this revolution. They knew how to create a space for otherness in an aggressively homogenised landscape, and a garden within themselves. They knew how to block out the things that weren’t working and how to nurture those gardens and souls so they could survive.”

In a positive yet puzzling development, little or no fuss has been made of the queerness of avant-garde pop duo CocoRosie, despite the fact that Bianca (the older sister) is really an open book in this respect, very theatrical in her stage performance and drag costuming. In an interview, Bianca remarks she finds it “interesting that as a ‘female’ artist in this time, I can go in complete drag on a regular basis and no one really notices, whereas an artist like Antony was torn apart about his transsexuality in all of the first major articles written about him." Promising as the freedom that Bianca is afforded may be, it also highlights an enduring societal inequality, which is decidedly more accepting of women acting as men than vice-versa. Nevertheless, both musicians are distinctive in the way they take risks and make themselves vulnerable in their performances. Not being afraid of criticism allows for a beauty and honesty that is universal in meaning and has proved irresistible to fans and the industry critics alike. There are no two ways about Antony’s intentions: “When you put forth something you care about or feel sincere about, there is a risk involved. People can say all sorts of things about you, but there’s potential for a really rewarding dialogue with the world. And it’s in that spirit I do the work that I do.”

Performance has always provided a space in which the boundaries of sex, gender and sexuality become blurred. Successful performance is not acting but rather becoming a persona, and in this world of appropriation any image, whether male or female, is a character to replicate (as an example, see Cate Blanchett become Bob Dylan in I’m Not There). But just as art imitates life, so life also imitates art. Gender transgression and transformation in performances and art demonstrate to the rest of us that identity is not static, but rather, like a performance, it’s an evolving process of who we want to become.