Serpentine partners with EAF25 to premiere a new performance by choreographer and dancer Lewis Walker.

EAF25 and Serpentine are delighted to present the premiere of Bornsick a new performance by choreographer and dancer Lewis Walker. The performance will debut at the Round Chapel in London before travelling to Edinburgh this Summer, closing out EAF25 with a site-specific iteration.

Lewis Walker (they/them) is a London-born queer, non-binary movement artist. Their work spans theatre, film, fashion, music, and the commercial sector. In Bornsick, they explore themes of humanhood, performativity through queerness and referencing.

Lewis Walker said: “Bornsick reflects the idea that we inherit illness-born into a system that shapes us before we can define ourselves. The gymnastics and dance performance explores identity as a compulsive act of referencing, an endless cycle of borrowing and reshaping of what came before.

Bornsick suggests that humanhood is a paradox; we search for something real, yet everything we are is borrowed. We long for authenticity, but if reality is only an echo of what came before, then individuality itself is an illusion; the self exists purely as a reflection.”

From the moment we enter the world, we inherit history; gestures, roles, expectations. We are taught movement, speech, and existence. The queer body, in particular, exists in a tension between conformity and freedom constructing and reconstructing itself through cultural echoes. In a world built on repetition, in Bornsick, identity becomes an act of shapeshifting, a constant negotiation between imposed structures and self-determined transformation never fixed but always in flux.

This idea comes to life in the performance as a body is built, piece by piece-a character assembled through learned movements, imposed behaviors, and artificial layers. Yet as these layers are stripped away, what remains is not a pure, original self, but another reference, another construct. Through conditioning, we create a machine. Through unlearning, we return to the animal. The cycle continues, revealing that there is no final, fixed truth-only endless adaptation.

The project is curated and produced by:

Serpentine: Kostas Stasinopoulos, Curator, Live Programmes, Serpentine, Daisy Gould, Assistant Curator, Live Programmes, Isobel Peyton Jones, Producer, Serpentine and Andy Downie, Production Manager, Velocet.

EAF: Kim McAleese, Director and Eleanor Edmondson, Curator, EAF (Edinburgh Art Festival).

Credits:

Choreographer: Lewis Walker
Performance: Lewis Walker
Music from: Oliver Coates, “Throb, shiver, arrow of time” and “skins n slime”
Look Engineer: Straytukay
Lighting Designer: Laurie Loads
Lighting Programmer & Co-designer: Edward James Saunders
Graphic Designer: Marco Andrea Cacioni
Set Designer: David White
Hypnotherapist: Michele Occelli
Poster photographer: YISKID
Physiotherapist & acupuncturist: Atsue Morinaga