ANATOMALIA: anatomy + anomaly + femalia & wakes in heart’s break
Sunday, November 9, 2025
1:45pm - 2:35pm
Black Box Theatre
ANATOMALIA: anatomy + anomaly + femalia
A series of choreographic installations inhabited by 5 dancers. Set in multiple environments, audience follows a chorus of local participants between sites encountering secret performances along the way. ANATOMALIA is a collective healing of the damage done to ‘femalia’ and a celebration of queer joy. Through dance, installation, original music and designed experience, Anatomalia creates performance rituals through collective action and aims to change inner landscape and outer world.
wakes in heart’s break
“This score builds out a queer and feminist reimagining of the concept behind Nestor’s Cup. Mythologized in the Iliad and later found to be a real cup, the story and inscription on Nestor’s cup is renowned for bestowing the (male) drinker with great sexual virility. During my Banff residency, I ran several pieces of Greek text from the real cup, as well as supporting texts as outlined in Stephanie West’s essay “Nestor’s Bewitching Cup”, through online translators to ascertain and obscure its meaning. From this experiment, Hestor emerged. Though initially amorphous and without place, she found her poetic form in the wake of a breakup during which time I needed strength and ritual to find my way back to myself.” - nina jane drystek
Artists and Creators
nina jane drystek is a poet, writer and performer based in Ottawa, unceded Algonquin Anishinaabe territory. she is author of the chapbooks missing matrilineal (above/ground press, 2023), a:of:in (Gapriot Press, 2021) and knewro suite (Simulacrum Press, 2019), and her poems have appeared in online and print publications, as well as in self-published chapbooks and broadsides. her original sound poem scores can be heard on bandcamp. she is one of the co-founders of Riverbed Reading Series, was shortlisted for the 2020 Bronwen Wallace Award for Poetry, writes collaborative poetry with VII – authors of holy disorder of being (Gap Riot, 2022) and Towers (Collusion Books, 2021) – and performs sound poetry with the rotating group of collaborators. if you have ever lived in the same city as her you have likely seen her riding a red or blue bicycle. you can find her @textcurious or contact her via electronic mail.