Earlier this year, Red Shutter Club sat down with Liverpool pop artist Giorgia Bortoli to discuss her upcoming music and her dance workshops. For this end of year review, we’ve brought her back in to talk further on her ‘Movement Workshops’ and the efforts she’ made towards fostering accpetance and inclusivity, and creating spaces where marginalised bodies can express themselves through dance.
‘My whole life I’ve studied musical theatre, but you could see the difference in how other people treated you, even by the time I was in high school.’ From childhood to degree level, Giorgia has lived musical theatre, but her relationship with one of the core tenets of the craft has been consistently challenged as she advanced through her education. A little girl who loved to dance grew into a young woman who could bear it no longer, why? ‘Teachers would always put me to the back of the class, even though I’m only 5’2, they just wanted me out of sight.’ Moving in a larger body, Giorgia amassed a host of traumatic experiences throughout her attempts to maintain a relationship with dance. During her studies at university, unable to secure a place in a chosen module, she was forced to take one in dance; ‘I saw all these people that didn’t look like me, had a panic attack and left!’
When embarking upon a career in music, Giorgia found herself drawn to collaboration, with make-up artists and photographers for photoshoots and, for music videos, she wanted dancers. For about a year and half now, Giorgia’s ‘Movement Workshops’ have invited people in marginalised bodies, with or without experience in dance, to come and express feely in movement. ‘I wanted to find people of all different shapes, sizes and races to be in my music videos, I wanted to represent every kind of person.’ Since then, every two weeks, dedicated artists have come to take part in this growing community. These dancers range from people over the age of thirty who’ve never done dance before, to professional drag performers; ‘they’re just grateful to have the space to express themselves without judgement.’
These sessions are freeform, the artists are invited to respond to a chosen track in whichever way they feel at that moment. There’s no brief, no assigned way in which they are asked to move. From these early exploratory stages, a routine is progressively defined until a final choreographed piece is finalised. To Giorgia, this method offers a meditative way for dancers to connect with their bodies on an instinctive level. The hope is also, for social enrichment, giving adults out of university a chance to meet new people and, through dance, connect people on a deeper level that can only be achieved through collaborative creation.
The story is heartwarming, and the music videos produced by the group are triumphs tiers beyond that of the technical, the need for such a venture is nevertheless infuriating. ‘The industry likes to tell us that larger people can’t do it, and that’s why the inclusion isn’t there.’ Tutors and professionals can claim that certain bodies can’t dance, and anyone who tries to defy their dusty mental image of what a dancer should look like, faces ridicule and underhand abuse. Giorgia’s accounts of the ways in which she was made to abandon a passion she’d had since childhood aren’t anomalous, similar stories can be found from other workshop members, they can be found just about anywhere.
The causes of prejudice are far too nuanced and I have far too little tact to engage with them here, but there is hope; ‘you can just open your phone, scroll through TikTok or Instagram, and see what people are saying about large bodied dancers simply isn’t true.’ We are living in times of unprecedented connectivity, where our perceptions of the world and those who inhabit it were once defined by a centralised media, can now be defined by whatever happens to pass your algorithm that day. Where you were once told ‘this can’t be done’ a simple Google search can now prove them wrong. Though the internet is no utopia of shared information, marginalised people have more of a voice now than they’ve ever had in history.
Giorgia’s efforts are not the first, nor will they be the last, in the fight for kindness, to ourselves as much as to others. ‘Inclusivity is essential, if we look in our communities, we do not all look the same. We should be seeing what we see in our streets in our media.’ On the dance session she fled; ‘having that representation there would have put me at ease.’ Through her drive to empower and represent, Giorgia has altered the trajectory of other’s lives in a positive way, an impact she’s having on herself. ‘It’s given me more confidence to follow dance opportunities outside the workshops, and I’m no longer afraid to share me little dances on instagram.’ ‘I always used to wear exclusively black and grey, not wanting to be seen, but it doesn’t matter how much you try to hide yourself, you are who you are.’ It takes one look through her social media pages to see how much has changed, she lives vibrantly now in colour and confidence, and she’s bringing the people around her along for the ride.
The Movement Workshop’s next project is the music video for the long awaited ‘Big Love’, the song Giorgia played for her Red Shutter Club Couch Concert, the plan is to bring the group’s drag talent centre stage. ‘‘They feel most comfortable when they’re in drag, I wanted to bring that space to the music video.’ As a lover of over the top camp, Giorgia plans to express the narrative of the song; ‘about the journey of a larger bodied person within love, which is very difficult,’ with help from the experienced drag performers in the workshops. Though she’s never been an outright fan of the art form, she sees it as an exciting opportunity to let her dancers express themselves in ways where they feel most empowered. Filming begins this month (note to editor: we publish this January filming starts in January) with an expected release date, fittingly, of the week before Valentine’s Day.
If you’ve found yourself inspired by this story, inspired by Giorgia’s ability to build a community where confidence and acceptance can be gained through inclusivity, and may even be considering the ways in which you could follow suit, her advice is simple; ‘If you’ve got the best intentions, then that’s all you need. If you’ve experienced prejudice first hand then you know what to do.’ And, if you just needed to hear it, she left us with this; ‘Shout it from the rooftops, your love is your own!’
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