Install Theme

Your web-browser is very outdated, and as such, this website may not display properly. Please consider upgrading to a modern, faster and more secure browser. Click here to do so.

Bodies that Spread//Bodies That Scatter

This is a Hampshire College Division III (undergraduate thesis), but it is also a healing process I do not intend to end. I have a visible and physical disability. I am a dancer. I am a lover. I continue to be disabled when I am dancing and when I am making love. Under my skin there is a lot of trauma surrounding the visual and physical reception of my body by others. But rather than desensitize others to my difference, to desensitize you to the difference of any marginalized monstrous body, I would rather resensitize you. Remind you of the many uncanny creatures that erupt from within you too. Your body, our body, how monstrous, how sticky, how awkward, how horrifying, how weird. How wonderful. Bodies are haunted. And you are so so brave. Your others are waiting for you.
Apr 28 '13
“Like porn, dance stages bodies for other’s pleasure. Like porn, dancing has been maligned for the moral dangers it purportedly poses to the individual and society. Porn and dance similarly deal with: issues of propriety and obscenity, public censure, voyeurism, the multiple layers of meaning and fantasy, and the power relations of who gets to call the shots.”
— ?got an itch to scratch? (via halfmondaysgrave)

12 notes (via weresealfurreal & halfmondaysgrave)Tags: porn dance still as relevant as the day i reblogged it before

Dec 19 '12

A Photo-essay: Decolonizing My Body, My Being

He understood the purpose of the entire exercise. He realized that he wasn’t just photographing a naked black queer femme man with a visible disability, but essentially, peering into my consciousness and extrapolating a truth I already knew: that my body, that all of our bodies, are worthy of aesthetic adulation, that communities, institutions and power are at fault for constructing beauty, desirability and body positivity in reductive, myopic ways.

-Edward Ndopu

http://thefeministwire.com/2012/12/a-photo-essay-decolonizing-my-body-my-being/

1 note Tags: love light submission

Dec 11 '12

princeofprance:

costume design by Gaines (princeofprance) for Swallow, Beauty. You are already inside the body you fear an erotic dance installation thesis by Lyric Seal

42 notes (via princeofprance)Tags: caves spelunking leather harness bdsm punk rock costumes my friend's work my show

Dec 11 '12
“Walking in and around the comfortably dark space you created allowed me to be present in a way that I’m usually not: aware and receptive, curious and only bearably apprehensive, your monsters making the suggestion that mine might be less frightening…So it was something I felt as happening to me, in me, but also not, it being your fear and your courage and your anger tempered by love and humor, asserting a willingness to be in the body, yours, and suggesting to us that we might also be brave enough…It was spiritual and opening of that space between self and other trying to be respectful, gentle, aware and real about it…the way we knock against each other or make such faint overtures that they are not even registered…it was a very good and personally important piece, it felt whole and complete as a work but ongoing as an experience…”
— some of my mom’s thoughts on the show!

3 notes Tags: reviews dance theatre mothers willingness the body darkness spiritual self other

Dec 11 '12

Congratulations. I was certainly devoured and spat back out.

Dec 9 '12

Silver Lining

Friday, December 7, 2012

Silver Lining

On the day,
when I should have been dancing
in a thesis performance
I was instead relieved to
progress to pre-standing exercises
in physical therapy.
Breath returns to something
resembling even.
- Martina Robinson
(part of the original working cast of Swallow, Beauty. You are already inside the body you fear.)

Tags: poetry disability injury gratitude bodies love dance

Dec 8 '12

“Swallow, Beauty. You are already inside the body you fear” debuted at the Canal Gallery last night. One night only for now, but we’ll see where it goes. I could not be more proud of my cast: Jackie, Alê, Roberto, Justin, Eshe and Miles. Of my cave guides. Of my set designers. My sound designer. Of my monsters. Of my own sticky body. It was literally sticky by the end of the show. Honey.

photos by Josh Sugiyama

8 notes Tags: dance photography feast light scab caves sex bodies body shame liberation birth wish fulfillment macabre monsters light dirty dirty love bones reach creatures of the wound impact contact improvisation

Dec 5 '12
I want you to see my gnarled skin, stitched and taut like purse strings pulled too tight. I want you to feel the hardness of the thick, star-shaped scar that explodes and leaves deep, grooved trails in its path. When you look me in the eyes, stroke my cheek, and tell me I’m beautiful, I want you to look right here, touch right here, and not look away. 

I want you to see my gnarled skin, stitched and taut like purse strings pulled too tight. I want you to feel the hardness of the thick, star-shaped scar that explodes and leaves deep, grooved trails in its path. When you look me in the eyes, stroke my cheek, and tell me I’m beautiful, I want you to look right here, touch right here, and not look away. 

Tags: monsters love submission

Dec 5 '12

2 notes Tags: monsters hauntings a meeting love dirty dirty leakage submission

Dec 5 '12

Another manifestation of “This is about yr needs//”.

For now I’d like to call it, “Shit Able-Bodied People Say.”

11 notes Tags: zique the beast this is about yr needs disability ableism relationships confession bathtub bathroom vulnerability history queer temporality corporeal face filtrum piercing face tattoos denial love