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Conceptually, my piece is inspired by 18th-century European masquerades as a possible space for women to express their desires and social agency. More broadly, though, I'm curious about constructed realms of escapism that societies create for release…. the carnival, the masquerade, the cabaret, the club…. and particularly their connection to notions of queerness. Thanks to theorists Mikhail Bakhtin and Mary Russo, I’ve been fascinated by the carnivalesque and the grotesque since undergrad, especially how these concepts relate to the (female) body and socio-political subversion. Eventually, this led me to literary scholar Terry Castle’s research on English masquerades, which serves as the textual foundation for my current work.
I also wanted to play around with the idea of tight spaces, literally and metaphorically speaking. When do we normally find ourselves in tight spaces, and how do we respond to them? With this in mind, the audience might notice ways the dancers’ bodies generate and move through tight spaces, as well as how spotlights create new, smaller rooms on stage.
As a choreographer and scholar, I’m always excited by the use of objects on stage and the nature of these items as unruly agents; you never quite know how they will respond in the moment. I’m especially invested in exploring the artistic potential of pointe shoes—their materiality, symbolism, and inescapable relationship with the ballerina. This work focuses on pointe shoe ribbons to create new lines, to confine and restrict, to connect bodies and transform them into one moving entity, and to allude to bondage, as well as theories around the fetishization of pointe shoes. For example, during my piece, one dancer burns and feeds ribbons to another performer. In addition to the more obvious connotations relating to what is happening on stage, this moment references two different events in ballet history during the 19th century: one, numerous ballerinas burned to death because of stage accidents in candle-lit theaters, and two, legend has it that a group of fans once cooked and ate Marie Taglioni’s pointe shoes.
In the beginning of the semester, I had my cast read the introduction to Castle’s Masquerade and Civilization: The Carnivalesque in Eighteenth-Century English Culture and Fiction (1986, Stanford University Press) and find popular films and paintings of masquerade parties. We talked about the materials, and the dancers individually (and then in small groups) generated a movement response to them. Later, I had the dancers watch and discuss different contemporary ballets that were relevant to our work regarding object-use, movement dynamics, or thematic content. People tend to be more familiar with classical ballets, so I wanted to expose the dancers to this other lineage for inspiration.
I hope the audience is intrigued by the work and that they find moments of connection within the intentionally designed disconnection, or as Castle explains, “The mask mystified the object of desire; it symbolized the absence or withholding of connection. It was a kind of stylized evasion—a formal sign of resistance to full human exchange. Not surprisingly, masked individuals were seen as fetishistically exciting” (1986, 39).
- Mara Mandradjieff's work: Fo(u)r Tight Spaces
- Greg Catellier & Kristin O'Neal's work: Fault Line
- Madelyn Sher's work: Match
- Andre Lumpkin's work: What is Love
- Meg Gourley's work: Insatiable Likeness
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