This keynote performance uses the theatre play Mi Amigo Giovanni to explore themes of love, friendship, loss, death, and queer communities through the relationship between two characters, Elliot and Giovanni. The story engages with the concepts of ‘continuing bonds with the deceased’ (Klass, Silverman, and Nickman, 1996), ‘vibrant death’ (Lykke, 2022), and ‘choreography as a method of inquiry’ (Carter, 2020) to suggest that death does not mean the end of a relationship as the characters continue relating to each other beyond time and physical existence, and that death impacts the bereaved person in a way that grief needs to be processed through the body.

 [‘Will you ever let me go?’]

While Giovanni lived in a precarious world that saw his death due to stigma, lack of community support, structural inequalities, health challenges, and medical negligence…

 [‘On our watch we let him die’]

…the play engages also with the celebration of gay love, friendship, and life; the formation of queer communities; and the power of hope through artistic expression. We invite the audience to explore our understanding of what it means when someone dies while they still live in and through the bodies of a community who loves them.

[‘I never met him, but I’ll never forget him’]

Through this piece, the performers expand common understandings of death by embracing a multifaceted understanding of time, combining linear and atemporal perspectives, physical and digital facets, and psychological and embodied perspectives to explore the complexities of grief, remembrance, and the enduring nature of friendship. Mi amigo Giovanni presents the paradox of a life that is memorialised in an ephemeral yet perduring way, and the presence of the dead manifesting themselves through the bodies of the living. With the grieving body as the focus of this project, the choreographic elements of this performance offer a fresh and innovative approach to qualitative inquiry and bereavement support, providing a means of communication, expression, and healing.

[‘I dreamed I was getting married!’].