Riley Davidson

ACTOR

DANCER

PERFORMER

CREATIVE DIRECTOR

RILEY DAVIDSON (they/them) is a queer non-binary performance artist, dancer and theater maker based in Berlin. As an autodidact, their work spans many genres including immersive/participatory theater, experience design, drag, contemporary dance, grief tending and durational performance art.

Through all shapes their work may take, Davidson creates containers in which audience members can explore their own agency and vulnerability in relation to the subject matter.

Ranging from comedic to contemplative, Davidson employs a critical lens towards the interwoven systems of oppression with a focus on capitalism and its long term effects on the collective nervous system. Davidson creates work tailored to invite the audience to question what is taken for granted within these social constructs. Davidsons work is in response to the needs of their community. They offer their work to imagine liberatory futures through the catharsis of collective grief and joy as resistance.

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PERFORMANCE

GRIEF GARDEN PARTY

Brücke Museum Berlin Germany – ONSITE Residency (2023)

1hr15 // participants, 7 // Grief experience design

Grief Garden Party is a facilitated collective grieving experience through performance art and story. It is the story about Big Grief and Small Grief, narrated by the Director performed by Davidson. This character guides the participants through Grünewald Forest, where they are introduced to 5 species of local flora based on their medicinal properties, mythology, response to climate change and migration history. Each species forms a character in the Directors theater. The guests are met with a golden invitation with a task upon arrival and through the journey are being invited to a tea party arranged in a handwoven nest inside of the forest. At the end of the piece everyone is invited to both bury their grief and to share something about it.

Photos: Loup Delfandre

CARE RITUAL

Club Aeden – Lunchbox Candy (2023)

1hr45 // Durational performance art

Care ritual is a form of collective ritual – self care that gets extended into community care.

The recipe:

Enter the dance floor as a party guest, cool and self composed.

Enter the “bathroom” and remove all clothing and jewelry.

Stretch the body and release the hair.

Bathe self in the tub, removing makeup last, the final defense.

Towel dry self and begin to massage golden oil starting from the feet, focusing on centering and care.

Once covered in golden oil, offer hand massages to guests at the party, focusing on service and gentleness.

Repeat until finished.

Photo: Loup Delfandre

ICONIC

Club Aeden – Lunchbox Candy (2024)

1hr45 // Performance

Embodied storytelling, drag, contemporary dance, sound design

ICONIC is a performative allegory merging the historic uses of iconography and the contemporary vernacular of “Iconic” in Queer communities. The piece begins with a spray painting: “Thou shall have no Gods before me”. A Pope inspired outfit reveals a slick oily underskin. Self-anointment in unholy water and bathing in wine. Bandages are removed and refracting mirrors are revealed. The isolation of being placed on a pedestal becomes evident. The distance created between the worshiper and the icon serves both to make holy and to place in a hierarchy ourselves below that which is made holy.

Photos: Michaela Haider