Beyond Dirt Knees is an investigation of history and sexuality through media, memories, and movement. The performance builds itself around a specific experience Ryan had with an older man nearly three times his age. Beyond Dirt Knees speaks of family, personhood, and sex as it asks: How is one’s language of identity written? Is identity malleable or is it set from childhood? How does experience fit into the manifestation of self? It is these experiences, and only them, which have made us who we are today, why would we ever want to take them back?