Part 1 The Body is the Frontline: Trans, the Military, the Body and Dance

Part 1 of 3 of a speech delivered at the Genspect Conference, Lisbon, September 2024.

My name is Rosie Kay, and I am a choreographer and dancer. My work is highly physical and athletic, often described as dance theatre with a political edge—something I’m going to reflect on today. While much of my work explores complex and political themes, I also create abstract pieces that focus on the emotional and sensory impact of dance and music on an audience.

Over the years, my career has taken me to some fascinating places. I’ve been an artist-in-residence at the University of Oxford’s School of Anthropology, as well as an associate artist at Birmingham Hippodrome Theatre. In 2018, I reached a major milestone when my company became part of the National Portfolio Organisation, receiving regular funding. My interests have also led me into the field of neuroscience, where I’ve explored how music and dance uniquely affect the human brain. It’s an ongoing fascination of mine—how dance transforms the body and the mind, and how it speaks to something primal within us.

My work has toured the world, receiving critical acclaim with four- and five-star reviews, numerous awards, and nominations. I’ve had the privilege of choreographing for major global events, including the Commonwealth Games live handover, feature films, and Olympic projects. Yet, alongside the critical success, my work has always had a political edge. I’ve never shied away from speaking out, even when it involved addressing uncomfortable truths. Over time, this drive to explore difficult topics led me into discussions of military intelligence, surveillance technology, and ethics, culminating in a series of talks I titled The Mind is the Frontline. Some of the themes from those talks will be particularly relevant to our discussion today.

Today, I want to share my work, my research, and some insights I’ve gained—specifically around transhumanism and the military’s exploration of the augmented human soldier. But first, let me offer some context by sharing a bit about my journey.

For those who may not know me or my story, I was preparing to premiere one of the largest productions of my career—a dance adaptation of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet at Birmingham Hippodrome. It was a massive undertaking, involving a young and relatively inexperienced cast. Many of the dancers had only just graduated, some during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, meaning they hadn’t even had the chance to perform their graduation pieces. There was a strange atmosphere in the studio—a mix of excitement and uncertainty—and I felt a strong urge to nurture and support this young cast.

One evening, I invited the dancers to my home for dinner with my husband and six-year-old son. After the meal, later into the night, the conversation turned to my next production, an adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando. I was two years into preparing for the show, about to go into the audition phase, and already finding myself in difficult conversations with my management. The challenge was how to phrase the audition notices in a way that reflected the complexities of the lead role. Orlando, as many of you know, transitions between male and female across time, and the performer would need to embody both aspects convincingly. Navigating this discussion in the current cultural climate was proving to be challenging.

I’ve long been aware of the cultural shifts happening around us. In fact, I created an autobiographical solo work, Adult Female Dancer (2021), exploring what it means to have a female body and work my entire life as a dancer. Around this time, I wrote to J.K. Rowling, thanking her for her essay on the importance of protecting women’s spaces—a subject that resonates deeply with me as a survivor of domestic abuse and coercion. However, this awareness of the cultural moment and my outspoken nature eventually led to a series of events that would change my career.

Following the dinner, dancers in my company began to make complaints against me. These complaints were encouraged by my management and financially supported. By this point, I had already stepped down as director, as my company had transitioned into a charity, but within its charitable objectives was the commitment to explore taboo subject matter. Despite this, the board treated me as though I were guilty before any investigation had taken place. An initial investigation exonerated me, but one dancer, who had already left the company, appealed the decision, triggering a much more serious investigation, this time led by external lawyers and HR consultants. What made this especially painful was that the investigation was paid for with money I had earned through my productions.

The toll on my health and wellbeing was immense. Advised by my lawyer and my mentor, I made the difficult decision to resign and sue for constructive dismissal. Within a week of my resignation, the company folded, despite having healthy reserves. I later discovered that it had pushed itself into insolvency. What followed was a year and a half of legal battles to reclaim my intellectual property, artistic work, and even the right to use my own name. It was an incredibly unpleasant experience, one that cost me my company, my planned production of Orlando, and many valuable relationships within the arts community.

This difficult chapter also brought me into a deeper exploration of transhumanism, a movement that, to me, seeks to alienate humans—especially vulnerable young people—from their bodies. Transhumanism is built on the idea of dissociation from the self, and while its roots may seem modern, they are not entirely new. During the Industrial Revolution, the human body was likened to steam engines and machines. More recently, in the age of computers, the body has been described in digital terms.

A decade ago, while working with women suffering from severe eating disorders, I encountered the clinical head of psychiatry at an eating disorder unit. She explained how anorexics’ brains could be understood as failed computer loops—a clinical metaphor that revealed just how alienated these women had become from their physical selves. This work gave me a glimpse into the devastating impact of dissociation from the body, and it’s part of why I view the transhumanist agenda with deep concern. I see parallels between this movement and the vulnerabilities I witnessed in those women, particularly among young people today who are increasingly disconnected from their physical realities.

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