Arts Centre Vooruit, Ghent, Belgium

(BIG GIRLS DO BIG THINGS) is a solo on scale, volume, extreme limits and the grey areas between them; on pride and vulnerability, hubris and humility, visibility and subtlety; on the fragile braggadocio of living large when less is more but more is also unmistakably more. Shape-shifting an empty shell of a human being, Eleanor Bauer invites the audience on a safari expedition deep into the superficial abyss of the essentially constructed personality of the entertainer. In (BIG GIRLS DO BIG THINGS), self-expression drops the self and expression takes over: style is content, personality is material, and identity is irrelevant. (BIG GIRLS DO BIG THINGS) is an old-school performance-art magic trick in which the performer herself disappears by immersion and dissipation in abstract forms and literal characters that disguise, exceed, and transgress the definitions and boundaries of race, gender, species, genres and abilities. (BIG GIRLS DO BIG THINGS) is about defying expectations while accepting the challenge of embodying the monsters that self-perception, other people’s perceptions, and the relentless machine of culture have suggestively installed around and within us. As a bone-thug drag queen psychic ballerina, Bauer undergoes a maximalist and detailed exorcism of the boring identity politics of inhabiting and communicating through a human body, joyfully shattering the frames that inhibit the great experiment and experience of being human as a performance of the possible, if only to reveal that things are not always what they seem.

According to the newspaper De Morgen, this performance is one of the must-sees of the season!