about | thesetenderalms

these tender alms is the first piece collectively created by Lesley Ewen and Catherine Hoffmann working together as a newly formed collaborative duo.

Catherine and Lesley first performed together in July 2015, as founding members of Dickie Beau's House of Strange Loops. Whilst they each have an ongoing solo and collaborative Live Art practice, they've discovered that in working together something unique arises. Their collision of worlds, cultural identities, personalities and experience generates an intriguing oddness. Their explorations - into absurd play, DIY song making and drag - synthesize into a rich vocabulary.

They create ‘curious songs’; garbled renditions of well-known melodies re-purposed and re-arranged to underscore their home-made rituals. They make actions and ceremonies using found objects and corner shop food; a commentary on the civil rituals we all engage in; a distortion of social behaviours; a struggle between the unruly desire for interdependence and individualism.

Through their drag personae, Angus & Rashall, they play with binary points inherent in race (black/white) and gender (male/female). This opens up a hinterland where they highlight, deconstruct and resist the roles assigned us.