Simon Mayer's Sons of Sissy Deconstructs Folk Dance at Gender Bender

Austrian performer and choreographer Simon Mayer (b. 1984) presented Sons of Sissy at the Gender Bender festival in Bologna, a work that deconstructs traditional Tyrolean folk dances. The piece features a quartet of performers—Matteo Haitzmann, Patric Redl, and Manuel Wagner—who play accordion, two violins, and double bass while singing songs from Upper Austria. Initially harmonious, the performance shifts into chaos, with running, shouting, and aggressive physical contact. A long whip cracks to separate dancers, and nudity is used to expose vulnerability. Mayer, who trained at the Vienna State Opera Ballet and with Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, previously explored folk traditions in his solo work SunBengSitting, where he sawed a log into a bench and mixed folk dance, yodeling, and contemporary dance. Sons of Sissy draws on the Austrian Schuhplattler dance, but transforms it into a meditation on masculinity, fragility, and liberation. The performance moves from joy to aggression, with moments of trance and exhaustion, ultimately recomposing the group in a circle. Mayer's work questions social models and interpersonal mechanisms, revealing the truth of emotions through decontextualized folk material.