hush heresy heave (2025)
Words are often clumsy in articulating the understanding of the body. This practice-led research project aims to explore how hysterical choreographies—across movement, language, and lens-based media—might critically engage with the bodily impacts of capitalist-driven terrains and Western media culture. Grounded in my personal history as an ex-ballerina and neuro/queer cis-identifying woman, the historical and mythological concept of hysteria is positioned not simply as a consequence of cultural or physiological overwhelm but also as a site of resistance. Here, by engaging through a feminist hysterical lens, my own movement based improvisational and choreographic practices are applied across various mediums (including written and notational found text, film, and performance) to better grapple with the experiential history of the individual body.
Working alongside sociocultural gender frameworks, such as queer academic Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity, and consumerist gender-as-product paradigms, this research perceives the body as engaged in constant negotiation. Our everyday psychosomatic experience involves constant overwhelm; navigating on-and-offline environments filled with endless consumer goods, noisy cityscapes, and gendered social media wormholes. As such, through engagement with these themes coupled with autobiographical self-reflection and body-led creative exploration—my own hysterical tendencies have become evident. In other words, this research did not originally intend to explore hysterical frameworks, but through observation and bodily practice, I arrived at an understanding where qualities of the hysteric emerge as justified, healing, and resistant.
Isabella Rose Cort is an emerging artist, choreographer, and performer, specialising in body-led movement, text and lens-based practice. Arriving within contemporary art after a career in classical ballet, Isabella was first trained at Queensland National Ballet School, before being accepted into Elmhurst Ballet School (School of the Birmingham Royal Ballet, UK). Upon graduation, the artist was then fortunate to receive a professional contract for the DJKT Ballet, Czech Republic, however was forced to retire prior, following chronic injuries. Isabella then transitioned into the visual arts, undertaking studies at the Queensland University of Technology, where she received multiple Executive Dean’s Commendations and the 2024 Hilde Chenhall Memorial Scholarship. More recently, the artist has also undertaken a choreographic residency for Phluxus2 Dance Collective’s IndepenDance 2024 (as supported by Arts Queensland), and was selected to exhibit in Hatched: National Graduate Show 2025, at PICA, Perth.
isabellaroseartist.myportfolio.com
