ABSTRACT
Anima mulieris in corpore virilis inclusa : the soul of a woman imprisoned in a man’s body. Karl Ulrichs’ 1862 account of trans- experience echoes into own time in variants of the phrase “trapped in the wrong body”. Considering gender transition as embodied gesture also raises questions about related issues of continuity, retroflexion, and anticipation. All dance proceeds via transitions, but very little dance represents transition in terms of gender. Transitioning subjects anticipate a gender content they generate recursively out of their physical medium’s formal potential in relation to the context of its emergence. Transitional time’s folds may drag on the body in a way that produces the sense of arrest, deferral, and delay so richly explored by queer theorists of temporality.
