The saddest Cheerleader in the world

The "saddest cheerleaders in the world" are a 7-member installation and performance collective that I photographed. Since spring 2016, they have been embracing the "ugly" shapes and movements and putting them together in a spectacle of physical virtuosity. In an aesthetic balancing act between clown acrobatics, occult gym, cyborg bullfighting and neo-classical ballet, they indulge in world pain, inner emptiness and melancholy. Thereby they break with the gender roles, stereotypes and traditions of competitive sports cheerleading. They, the saddest, bridge the gap between high art and entertainment, amateurism and professionalism, performance and installations, creating a juxtaposition of fiction and reality, innocence and depravity, grotesqueness and grace. The starting point of the cheerleader's artistic work is the dissemination and establishment of an alternative, unaesthetic movement methodology in pop culture.