The Opening of Queer Love: Desire, Intimacies, Rights, Visibility exhibition will feature a #FLUID performative intervention.

Text & concept: Paula Dunker

Music: Alex Bălă

Video: Bogdan Lazăr (from the National Dance Center's archive)

In 1928, at the age of 14, Dumitru Checais saw Josephine Baker's performance in Bucharest. He returned to school the next day and, inspired, danced for his astonished classmates, who nicknamed him "Trăsnilă," and then "Trixy," a name Checais used throughout his life.

In the Universul Literar magazine on March 30, 1943, we can read: "Trixy quickly loves and loves demonically. Nothing resists him, he doesn't resist himself! He consumes himself with a rarely encountered, hallucinatory delight. From refinement carried to oblivion, he disperses, vaporizes, as if reaching the tail of a curl to descend and return to the initial stage from which he started and from which he departs in a leap." In an interview published in 1984, the 70-year-old Trixy Checais is asked what he would choose if he were to start life again. He responds: "I would still be passionate about dance, even though I suffered because of it. I think I would also like archaeology."

Who was this splendid local queer superhero? And why has there been so little talk about him? What is the legacy he left us? And how can we bring his magical dance among us today in the absence of any video recordings of him?