Bodylex is a timely new dance work that explores the physical effect of legal systems on the body.

Laws are designed to regulate human behaviour. How our bodies are constituted through these superimposed pressures is a complex phenomenon. We must constantly navigate – deliberately or unconsciously – the tension between externally fixed rules and our subjective desires. Do we resist, conform or adapt? The answer is at once both choreographic and political.

Dance artist and lawyer Rhys Ryan forges creative links between legal theory and choreography in this arresting new work for three dancers. By isolating embodied responses to rule-based systems, Bodylex probes bigger questions about power, agency and authoring our own futures in a world of colliding sovereignties.

Bodylex is presented by Dancehouse and supported by Yarra City Arts and LGI through a studio residency at WXYZ Studios.