Intimate

Animals

IntimateAnimals is a ritual-dance collective. We create experiments of multispecies mythology-making through community performance rituals, public prayer-apologies and hybridisation workshops.

Our practice is based on butoh, ancestral healing, embodied sci-fi and animism, and through these methodologies, we are exploring the intersection between queerness, ecology and intimacy.

Our skins are blurred and open, our cells communicate with the air, water, bacteria. We are trying to understand how this micro-communication generates our sense of self, our identities, our home and community-making frameworks.

We search for

moments of radical heart-lust

& body-ecosystem

symbiotic

euphoria.

IntimateAnimals have performed at Eco-Futures Festival (London, 2019), UnDisturbed Festival (Royal Albert Hall, London, 2019), Emergency Festival (London, 2020) and Riposte (London, 2021).

Who?

Kalina Petrova

Kalina (she/they) is a queer performance artist and curator. They are a radical care activist, working with butoh and experimental cinema.

Celeste Combes

Celeste (they/she/him) holds a BA(hons) from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, and is studying dramaturgy at Nanterre University, Paris.
She has held workshops and participatory performances inspired by paganism and sci-fi.
Her practice is influenced by Tanztheatre and french literature.

Byuka Krow

website

Byuka (they/them) is a ritual dancer, performance artist, poet. They work at the intersection of animism, ancestral healing and intimacy practices.

Florent Venet

website

Florent Venet (they/them) is a french costume designer and artist based in London. They studied Fine Art at Goldsmiths University where they consolidated their life-long interest in Costume Design & Art and received the Warden Prize 2021 for outstanding practice.

Intimate Animals is an open collective. Some of us have deeper roots here, some of us come in and out, like waves, and some meet us in creative kinship just once.

We carried fruitful collaborations with Thierry Alexandre, Movement Possession, Theo Alexander and Steph Artop for our body research series at the Royal School of Speech and Drama in 2019. We also create together with sound artist Nicole Bettencourt Coelho, for pieces such as Embryo Fossils, We move through porous ground and These claws shine into belonging.

We bring thanks to Martina Saorin, Audree Barve and Melanie for their sparks as well.