“Movement has been a crucial part to my health, self-acceptance and appreciation of life,” says London-born, queer, non-binary artist Lewis Walker, who became World Champion in acrobatic gymnastics when they were 18. After training from age 6 to 21, competing globally and representing Great Britain, Walker retired from gymnastics and retrained in contemporary dance. They now collaborate on theatre, film, fashion and music projects, including work with Yorgos Lanthimos, ANOHNI and Burberry. They perform in clubs, sometimes writhing in latex, and can be found on Instagram, casually pulling off extraordinary moves that do not look humanly possible, while Paris Hilton and Mariah Carey tunes play over the top.
Walker’s new piece, Bornsick is the closing performance at this year’s Edinburgh Art Festival. Walker will perform solo in the astonishing self-directed and choreographed piece, while hypnotherapist Michele Occelli puts Walker in a trance state and narrates throughout. The piece will be performed on a sprung gymnastics floor, soundtracked by Throb, shiver, arrow of time, the 2024 album by British cellist Oliver Coates, and Underworld’s ‘Born Slippy’. Co-commissioned by London’s Serpentine Galleries and Edinburgh Art Festival, Bornsick reflects the idea that we inherit illness, born into a system that shapes us before we can define ourselves.
The idea for the piece came last December when Walker was choreographing a routine for the UK National Team to perform at the Turin Acro Cup in Italy. “I was making a competition routine to Take Me To Church by Hozier. I hadn’t watched the promo video to the song prior to the trip, and I was just sitting in my apartment, watching on repeat, crying lots. The lyrics, ‘We were born sick, You heard them say it,’ were stuck in my head. It clicked and came together. Being born into a system that has already othered and decided your worth before you’ve arrived, with regards to the queer experience, you can sometimes be the only one in a family to experience that form of separation from normative society.”
Walker grew up “a closeted and confused queer child”, which diminished a lot of their self-esteem. “Movement, on the other hand, was this incredible tool to feel control and power in my body. If I wasn’t at the gym training, or at school dancing, I’d be at home on the trampoline, watching gymnastics videos, creating routines in my bedroom. I was hooked. To love and be completely inspired by something outside of formal education, which I didn’t have a natural disposition for, which involved connecting to my body and creativity, was such a beautiful, unknowing starting point to develop a career and lifestyle.”
Walker’s current work explores the shapeshifting nature of the queer experience, how one adapts out of safety, necessity or choice. Their movement is a mesmerising hybrid of raw athleticism and animalistic artistry. I ask how they find the overlap between gymnastic precision and more spontaneous, instinctive animal movements.
“I think this is still something I’m figuring out. As a competitive gymnast, we competed in two and a half minute floor routines, which always had the technical elements immersed in dance and music. However, the intricacies of the movement that I aspire to become much more challenging when I pair it with physically robust gymnastics elements.
“If you can imagine, doing a backflip or handstand requires extreme force and control and this starts to harden and block muscles, so I’m wanting to balance that out with fluidity and gooey textures. When I start bringing performers into my work, I have to design a technique which supplements both things; dancing like Pina Bausch, while somersaulting like Simone Biles.”
Lewis Walker: Bornsick, FirstStage Studios, 23 Aug, 7pm