Plue
A queer courting ritual that scrutinises where intimacy, visibility, privacy and queerness blur.
Eli & Joe are a queer couple who make dance. Their collaboration is an unlikely one, joyously smooshing two very different creative practices together like barbie dolls. This unholy matrimony has just begun, and it’s spewing out bizarre choreographic offspring, the first of which is Plue. Find out more about Joe's work by clicking here.
Currently in its infancy, Plue is a contortion of colour and mirror trickery, exploring the interplay between queer intimacy, disconnect and visibility. Spurred on by Eli & Joe's experience of lockdown together in rural Somerset, Plue uses layers of illusion to explore what happens when you attempt to camouflage parts of your identity. Somewhere between a clockwork doll’s courting ritual and a slow-motion magic show, Plue invites you to a place where all is not quite what it seems: Where people shrink & expand before your eyes. Where bodies warp and merge into many legged chimeras before dissolving into thin air with a puff of pink & blue smoke.
Eli & Joe want to examine rural queerness and physicalise the intimate-awkwardness of living on top of each other during lockdown. They want to capture the different stages of trying and failing to connect with someone in all its clunky absurdity.
During Plue's first R&D, Eli & Joe connected with 5 other LGBTQIA+ couples living rurally in the South West, documenting rural queer perspectives on how the pandemic has effected queer visibility, expression & intimacy. You can read some of the conversations they had by clicking here.
Photography, Post-production & Video _ Rocio Chacon
Choreography & Performance _ Elinor Lewis & Jo Garbett
Costume _ Chloe Mead