Baroque Walks

In Baroque Walks, Beautiful Confusion turns a queer lens on Baroque aesthetics. Particularly in the Czech Republic, the Baroque is everywhere. Often, we are literally surrounded by it as we walk through the events of our everyday lives. Hiding in plain sight, the Baroque only needs a little encouragement to reveal its camp delights. That is if you 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 (winner of the 2023 Thalia Award in the Alternative Theatre category) – offer a playful and penetrating walk through the Baroque. Drawing on their complementary movement practices and shared butoh vocabulary, they invite you 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 as a nonbinary playground full of larger-than-life personalities, exuberant decoration, queer pathos, the tragi-camp and a healthy dose of euphoria.