Artist Statement
I am a genderqueer, interdisciplinary artist. The performances I make center queer body politics by layering bombastic, postmodern-influenced choreography with erotic imagery, text and sound. Most of my work has an element of humor because I believe laughter generates trust between performers and the audience, laying the groundwork for both provocation and pleasure. Humor allows me to build bridges between public and personal; casual and erotic; banal and profoundly psychological. The form and theatricality of my work point to a critical intersection of queer kinship, and performance, through which I critique politics of exclusion and rigidity. Through my work and the worlds and communities I build within it, I seek to imagine more idealistic, less coercive, queer futures.
BBrendan Drake (all pronouns) is gender-queer interdisciplinary artist and educator based in Brooklyn/ Lenapehoking. Their work uses disparate movement forms, erotic imagery, text, and sound manipulation to interrogate issues surrounding gender, vanity, and queer power dynamics. Brendan was a 2017-2018 Fresh Tracks Artist at New York Live Arts and has been awarded grants and residencies through the Brooklyn Arts Fund, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, CUNY Dance Initiative, Brooklyn Studios for Dance, The Tank, and Chez Bushwick. Their recent work has been presented at Danspace Project (Draftwork), The Brick, La MaMa, PAGEANT, Joes Pub, The Wild Project, AUNTS, Brooklyn Studios for Dance, JrHigh (Los Angeles, CA), Fowler Museum (Los Angeles, CA) and The Dance Complex (Boston, MA). In addition to their work for the stage, Brendan choreographed the fall 2014 “Equality = Love'' campaign for Adidas Originals/Pharrell Williams. They served as the movement coordinator for editorial shoots with Vogue, Porter, V, and Elle Magazines (photographers: Liz Collins, Ryan McGinley, Collier Schorr). From 2022-2023, they were the director of UCLA’s “Sex Squad,” working collaboratively with undergraduates and LA County High School students to devise performances centering on issues of sexual health, consent, identity, and pleasure. In May 2023, they presented their graduate research on tracking queer sociality in contemporary dance and performance at the UCLA Queer Graduate Conference. They have also guest taught at Columbia University, the University of Massachusetts, Muhlenberg College, and the New York Film Academy. Brendan holds a BFA in Dance from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and an MFA in Choreographic Inquiry from UCLA.