Saturday 9 June 2012

Amusements VS. Velocity Pumps: A Question of Fetishisation


The experience of watching theatre at a festival is very different to that of watching a standalone piece, as inevitably seeing so many different shows back to back means you start to connect the dots, finding links and readings that couldn’t possibly happen if you saw those shows individually.
Friday night at the Flare Weekender had two shows, which on their own I would have found interesting, arresting even, but which in contrast to each other had a very intense effect on me.
Amusements by Sleepwalk Collective is a darkly voyeuristic show, manipulating your senses through a pair of headphones, letting the performer Iara Solano whisper in your ear as she tugs at your memories, playing with your consent and gazing at you with tears in her eyes.
Velocity Pumps by Beerman, Shvestarova, Theisen consists of three young women isolating parts of their body and contorting them into bodybuilding or balletic poses designed to strain the muscles til we see the bulge, the girls breath racing, their veins popping.
Both of these shows seemed focussed around fragmenting the female body, albeit to different intents and purposes.
 Iara invited us to watch her disappear, her lips, her legs, her blood, her skin. Her few movements draw our attention to the areas of her body most sensitive to touch. The voice of a strange unseen man in our ears asking us if he can touch himself while he watches the girl makes us feel trapped, horribly, in a dark and twisted peep show. We do not know if the girl consents, we just know that she is removing her knickers for him. She is broken down into components to be sexualised, fetishised, worshipped and adored. She is broken down into these parts until she disappears from view, leaving only a pair of stilettos to mark where the woman once was.
Conversely Velocity Pumps showed us the parts of the body women are so often expected to hide, to neglect. We saw women with muscles, with sweat, with blood pumping through their veins not to please men but to increase and show off their strength and power. We focus on calves and lats, biceps and abs, and revel in seeing someone work so hard. But the smiles are forced, the breathing laboured, the cheeks flushed. For us to appreciate the strength of these women they must put on a show for us. They must turn this strength to dancing. We must be entertained, not intimidated. The world of the bodybuilder is one steeped in vanity and well-worn poses, a world that feels faintly ridiculous. This is strength with no place to go, power with nothing to be powerful over. Once again this is fetishisation of the body, though a fetishisation of the body’s capability to perform, not simply to… well, to make new bodies.

These two shows on their own would have made me think, I may have ‘enjoyed’ them more individually, but in tandem they have made me seriously question the use of the female body in performance and the place and purpose of such fetishisation. Highly thought provoking work, and well recommended.

(cross posted on the Flare Weekender Blog.)

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