This LGI Make a Start residency took the form of a development for Camopansies. The work will be presented at Dancehouse Fringe, from 8–11 October 2025.
Camopansies started as research stemming from costume as a tactic for negotiating visibility within a queer lens. Camouflage is a material that is associated with militarised violence, although it also acts aesthetically as an abstraction of nature. The edges of a body become less clear, and the boundary between subject and world gets muddled. This border, or lack thereof, was the reason the Australian Military was apprehensive about camouflage technology. The idea of concealment or becoming less “human” was to them both feminised and racialised, as being closer to nature meant losing agency, and therefore untempered power. Frank Hinder, a camoufleur, suggested the name ‘Camopansies’ for his disparate group of artists.
This work takes the form of an uncomfortable boundary. When borders dissolve, what makes its way into the body, and what does it mean to dissolve into ‘nature’ when the natural itself is contaminated by plastics, waste, and troublesome ideas about purity? I’m curious about the fact that the potentially queer effects of environmental toxins are seen as more troublesome than their lethal effects. I’m not interested in dreams of uncontaminated nature; we are living in times of ecological collapse where we must be able to sit in these uncomfortable crossroads. Why is it that ideals of pure, able, and technologically untouched bodies still dominate conversations around ecological futurity and the natural?
Camopansies touches and is touched by a web of seemingly disparate themes. Waste, camouflage, transness and contamination meet at some sort of border – during this residency we worked to piece them together and build a choreographic response. It was a wonderful challenge taking this research off the document and transforming it into a choreographic work.
This was a new venture for me, coming from a design background, but I felt so excited to be supported by a wonderful group of artists including Iris Elgar and Angie Collins, both dancers, Chiara Wenban, our lighting designer, Clio Greig and Will Palazzo designing sound, and Sam Carson working with video and dramaturgy.
It was a great privilege to be trusted with the time and space to develop this work. The support from Lucy Guerin Inc and Dancehouse enabled us to take risks and experiment in ways that are endlessly valuable for emerging artists.
About Charlie Lee
Charlie Lee is a production designer, artist and performance maker from Aotearoa working across dance, text, costume making and film. Led by queer/trans* ecological methodologies and aesthetics of collapse, they make work which sits in precarious balances and feelings of anticipation, curious about how design and materials can act as choreographic agents beyond the human.