May 21, 2025 |
Lewis Walker’s Bornsick doesn’t fit neatly in one box. It’s not quite dance, not quite sculpture, not quite monologue – but exists somewhere in the charged tension between all three. Commissioned by the Serpentine and Edinburgh Art Festival (EAF), the one-hour performance is set to unfold over two nights – today and tomorrow – at Clapton’s Round Chapel. There, a motionless yellow form swathed in latex will sit at the centre, until, from the slick, chrysalis-like shell, a body emerges, contorted and entirely fetal, marking the start of the show.
“The vulnerability is just at another level,” Walker says, referring to their decision to translate Bornsick into a performance as opposed to any other art form. “Because of it, the offering becomes something heightened – almost sacred.” It doesn’t follow a narrative arc so much as it cultivates an imagined state of being – one of queer survival, religious shame and chronic illness. It’s also about living a life in flux, constantly reshaping oneself to the structures, or lack there of, imposed around them.
“I got obsessed with this conspiracy theory about shapeshifting reptilian aliens,” Walker says, referring to the sinuous fluidity and alert, alien-like movement they embody in the one-person performance. “I don’t believe I am one, but it reflected something in me. The way I’ve moved through the world as a queer person has often felt like that: a constant recalibration of how to exist, depending on the environment.”
The idea for the piece took root last December, while Walker was in Italy choreographing routines for the National Team in acrobatic gymnastics. When they heard Hozier’s Take Me to Church, one lyric lodged in their mind: ‘We were born sick / you heard them say it’. “I was just sitting in my apartment, watching on repeat, crying, which is extremely rare for me,” Walker says. Later, during a ten-day silent retreat, something clicked, and the lyric began to take shape. What followed was this, a performance fusing personal history with physical exactitude. For Walker, it’s a reckoning with the lifelong shapeshifting queer people often endure, not just in body but in belief and behaviour. “Bornsick is basically the experience of being a queer child,” they say. “Born into a society where your existence is othered and can be condemned or confused.”
At the same time, it’s a culmination of disparate references contextualised by Walker through movement. By this, they mean that nothing is new, and everything is borrowed. “I don’t believe anything I make belongs to me, and neither does anything anyone else makes belongs to them. Everyone gets their ideas from somewhere, nothing is original,” they say. “The way this manifests within choreography is the constant escalation of movements, like a warm up. I can only achieve the next step by completing the task, therefore I can only complete the show by the constant accumulation of references.”
That sense of adaptation is woven deep into Walker’s life. Born in London, they trained as a gymnast from the age of six, eventually becoming a Great Britain gymnast and Acrobatic Gymnastics World Champion, to choreographing routines for the British, Italian and French national gymnastics teams. This physical language has also landed the movement artist collaborations with Tim Walker, Yorgos Lanthimos and brands like Burberry. But it was those years of elite conditioning that taught their body to execute with machine-like discipline: form before feeling, perfection over presence. But in Bornsick, Walker unravels those codes. “It’s psychological,” they say, “A desire to break from conformist habits and move differently.”
Rather than rejecting their training, they repurpose it, pressing control against collapse, the structure mimics a conditioning session consisting of repetition, fatigue and then failure. “There’s only so much I can physically endure,” they say. “But hitting that limit is where something opens up. A kind of rock bottom. And from there, maybe, a way to transcend.” Throughout most of the piece, there’s no music either, only a deep, resonant voice; a sonic conductor that tethers the body to the ground and tells it what to do.
No movement is entirely random, with each gesture drawing on muscle memory, choreographic research and lived experience. “I might start with a task like ‘move from the longest spine to the shortest,’ then layer in rhythm, emotion, narrative.” The result is a body constantly in negotiation with itself either trained, strained or reshaped in real time.
Shapeshifting, here, isn’t just thematic but a choreographic method to explore their multi-dimensional identity. “As a queer person growing up femme, I learned to hide,” Walker says, leading a “double life,” made from Facebook profiles, secret playlists and closeted hook-ups. “That level of performance infiltrates everything – how you sit, how you breathe.”
Still, Bornsick resists leaning into personal confession. “I’m not trying to deliver a message. I’ve made something that I have to be brave to perform – that I hope is entertaining, skilful and full.” What matters isn’t the explanation, but the overall impact. “The work that’s moved me hasn’t done so because of what it’s about,” they add, “but because it shifted something in me. I hope Bornsick offers a full experience – something transferable, even if not always relatable.”
This potent impact remains why live performance is essential, even as Walker’s work spans film, fashion and music. “It’s the most transparent form of communication in the arts,” the performer says. What happens in Bornsick isn’t a polished revelation but a contemplative offering in real-time.
And though queerness runs through their work, Walker resists simple classification. “I don’t set out to make queer work. I want to make great work.” Their lens just happens to be queer. “Coming out taught me: if I can do this [life] differently, why not do everything differently?” And for 60 minutes, as Bornsick unfolds, Walker does exactly that.
Head down to Clapton’s, Round Chapel May 21 and 22 for the live performance of Bornsick. Book your ticket here. Miss it? Not to worry, you can catch Bornsick on tour with EAF25 in August to close the festival.
Photography courtesy of Serpentine.
