The Defendant's Body

The Defendant's Body is an iteration of my ongoing experimentation with a queered embodiment of justice-doing. It is a pursuit of an alternative dispute resolution choreography, seeking ways to transform the resolution of conflict into an embodied experience of an endurance of conflict. It asks how a queered, choregraphed, alternative to the trial format holds a potential to transform conflict and pain into intimacy, beauty, and movement and the risks involved in this act. 

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During the performance, audience members were invited to put on trial a defendant of their choice: one of their body parts. After reading their indictment, the audience voted whether the defendant was "guilty" or "not guilty."​ Be it a “guilty” verdict, I asked the prosecutor to firmly press the accused body part on my body; Be it a “not guilty” verdict, I asked them to softly caress it.

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The performance was held on 10 September, 2026 at Westminster University, London, as part of the Dance/Law stream of the Critical Legal Conference.