Ballet of the Masses opens with a performance that addresses individual expression and group dynamics with respect to gender, identity, and belonging; the social realities for many inside the practice of football; current efforts to transform sports into non-discriminatory spaces; and the embracing of sex and gender as spectrums outside a binary and oppositional model. Smoke Machine, Lion and Jeep (2021) by multidisciplinary trans artist Romeo Roxman Gatt is a poetic gesture questioning what type of masculinity is required to ‘fit’ into the category of male—and at what cost. By presenting a body that houses a range of ways of existing, which are not contradictory but interdependent, he proposes a masculinity that doesn’t constitute itself through superiority and power over others, but through vulnerability, self-care, and collective support. The performance is a letter to the artists’ younger self, addressed from the turf of a football ground and the smoky shadows of a club; a hopeful and loving message with the encouragement to trust the process and to have confidence in the multiple ways of becoming a man. The costume created for the piece reclaims the school uniform—often a heavy burden for non-binary, gender non-conforming, trans children and young adults—replacing awkward memories of such clothes with a reimagining of their material and forms. Throughout the work, Romeo evolves, eventually growing wings in a self-healing transformation with a beginning and a middle, but not an end—elaborating on gender as an unfinished matter and an opportunity to hold space for all to live wholesomely.

Concept, sound, costume, performance: Romeo Roxman Gatt 
Movement coach and dramaturgy: Florinda Camilleri 
Film: Niels Plotard 
Sound production: Adrian Camilleri 
Costume design: Holly Knowles

This event takes place in the frame of On Football and the Theatre of Collective Body Making.