CONTEMPORARY SOLO PERFORMANCE FESTIVAL

LÄBU

Southern Drawl

by

AVERY GERHARDT
USA

Author and performer: AVERY GERHARDT
Sound: LES SOEURS GOADEC
Lighting design: ROMMI RUTTAS and LEON ALLIK
Technical support: LEAH GAYER
Dramaturgical support: SANDRA KÜPPER and GIACOMO VERONESI
Producers: JÜRI NAEL and ANNIKA ÜPRUS
Thank you: To my cohort
Production: CPPM | Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre
Premiere: 13 September 2025 Kanuti Gildi SAAL

Southern Drawl is a choreographic inquiry into the politics of withdrawal—what happens after seeing the elephant. Drawing on the American idiom once used to describe disillusioning encounters with war, labor, and vice, the piece stages a disarticulated body wedged between exhaustion and refusal. The solo considers what it means to shed the weight of legibility in an increasingly polarizing, media-saturated world choosing instead to linger in a suspended, gestural state. Southern Drawl performs withdrawal not as absence but as antagonistic potential—where burnout, disorientation, and the embrace of uncertainty become acts of speculative becoming.

Avery Gerhardt

Avery Gerhardt is an independent choreographer and freelance performer from Houston, Texas. She is a resident choreographer for the emerging collective Motlee Party and is honoured to be pursuing a masters in Contemporary Physical Performance Making at EMTA.