When talking about The Young Boy Dancing Group (ybdg_), the first thing that comes to one’s mind might be the legendary lazers in the butts. Others know them from the time they accidentally set some of their audience members on fire in Berlin. Others, follow them on Instagram. Others are loyal followers also beyond the virtual world.
Personally, I was infuriated watching them beat up some innocent moss (for absolutely no apparent reason) during their 2023 performance in Biotoopia, after having spent two days in long discussions on how plants are indeed sentient beings and, how, along with the crucial role they play for the health of the ecosystem we inhabit, they also -most probably- feel pain. Whatever your interaction with ybdg_ may have been, one thing it is NOT: forgettable.
But what lies underneath this collective’s edgy and provocative style? Upon a closer look, and a conversation with founding members Nica and Maria, I come to understand that this work lies at the heart of modernity and is indeed a direct product (one might even call it a response) to the conditions that characterise the contemporary art scene and, in extension, the contemporary world.
The Origin Story
The story of ybdg_’s beginning might as well remain between rumours and creative story-telling. “Should we tell lies or the truth?” Maria responds when we asked to tell us how it all started. Indeed, there is no need to know how this meeting truly came to be, weather it was through school, at a crazy party or through the performing arts equivalent of grinder; all that matters is that Maria, Nica and Manu came together and discovered a common desire to make work that fancys itself anti-institutional.
The origin story of ybdg_ is that of three friends “kind of doing a show together.” in Maria’s words, trying out ideas wherever that was possible, facing the challenges of the severe lack of resources in the arts, the impossibility of finding time and space for research, development and rehearsals and at the same time the necessity for artists to survive in a deeply capitalist world. These are the conditions that seem to have shaped ybdg_’s method and, inevitably, style of work. "We started kind of quitting this institutional way of producing work," shares Nica, "We didn't have that luxury,". And this, according to Maria is when it all started taking shape.
Quick and Dirty: A methodology
It became a matter of figuring out how to make and tour work with close to zero financial (and not only) support. Undoubtably, operating outside the cushion of fancy art institusions poses more than a few challenges, but it also offers a freedom that cannot be found within the traditional boundaries of funded productions.
Their method is as simple as it can get:
Every place they go they invite local performers to join (whom they apparently recruit from Instagram).
For every show, there is an excel sheet where they put down ideas, a mix of new and old material, or material directly inspired from other works.
Upon arrival, they meet with the local performers one or two days before the show and together they design the performance. “We kind of figure out who wants to do what, what scenes, so it's very structured improvisation." Maria explains.
Set up the soundtrack and that’s it.
Inevitably this process does not lead to polished or well rehearsed material, but this is certainly not what the collective is interested in. Rawness, freshness, failure, and vulnerability in front of the audience is what they describe as “the heart of the work”.
If you happen to be present in one of ybdg_ shows, you can rest assured that it is as if you’ve been in all of their shows (more or less). And this, it seems, is not at all by accident.
“We only have one work that we keep on developing”, explaines Maria, “we'd like to call ourselves a bit more like a band or like a punk band. So you kind of play the good hits or sometimes you also don't need to play what the crowd wants, like with the lasers and stuff. Sometimes we don’t”. Reuse and recycle.
Followership
In a reality predominantly preceded by perception, image is everything. For ybdg_, Instagram is the perfect platform for playing with self(mis)representation: “If you see our work from Instagram, you might have an impression that we are this hypersexual group. But, when you see the show, it's actually very melancholic and very fragile world that has nothing to do with sexuality.” Instagram comes up a lot in our conversation, as it has become an essential tool for them to booking gigs and being able to make work. So, the crafting of their public image is something that ybdg_ take very seriously. As they say, they are “obsessed with photography” and they make sure to have a photoshoot wherever they go. And even though they claim to be more interested in the somatic side of dance making, their performances and creative method often do resemble the look of an edgy photoshoot.
Contemporarily yours
Beyond it being a coping mechanism of the characteristic lack of support in the arts, ybdg_’s “quick&dirty” method also responds to the capitalist need to overproduce and overconsume. “Make more and make it fast” is the overal motto of the global north so, why should art production be any different? And to whose expense? Why should artists spend months of unpaid labour in a creative process when we live in a world of fast tech, fast food, fast fashion and the list goes on?
Ybdg_ is remarkably contemporary and that’s not because of their so-called post-apocalyptic DIY aesthetic or the skimpy outfits and their impressive number of IG accounts being shut-down due to “extensive nudity” and openned anew. They are contemporary because they make exactly the kind of art that the current world allows: a kind of art that craves vulnerability, accidentally creates vioence and allows us to make more stuff without spending too much time and resources. Sexy and audacious, homogeneously queer and instagramably weird.
Any other kind of art is either privileged, delusional, or an act of resistance.
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