20 Rue Jacob
Inspired by the life and work of early twentieth-century painter Romaine Brooks, 20 Rue Jacob brought Brooks' unique portraits to life through video, sound, contemporary dance, sculpture, text, and burlesque, resulting in a cyclical multi-media immersive performance salon event. The event took place on May 22-23 in the historic Hoffheimer Building (2816 West Broad Street) in Scotts Addition in Richmond, Virginia. A blend of live performance, art exhibition, dance party, and intellectual salon, 20 Rue Jacob brought together a group of artists and performers working across a range of media from around the country for its realization. Conceived, choreographed, and directed by Courtney Harris and Charli Brissey, this project marked the culmination of over two years of creative research.
20 Rue Jacob is the address of writer Natalie Clifford Barney's former home on the Left Bank of Paris. It was here that she held famous salons during the early twentieth century, for which writers, artists, philosophers, dancers, and musicians would gather to eat, drink, dance, and share their work and ideas. Salon visitors included Isadora Duncan, T. S. Eliot, Virgil Thompson, Pablo Picasso, Ezra Pound, Sinclair Lewis, Truman Capote, Marcel Proust, and Greta Garbo, among many others. These salons also served as safe spaces for lesbian-identified women in Paris to socialize in more intimate settings. Author and playwright Joan Schenkar describes Barney's salon as "a place where lesbian assignations and appointments with academics could co-exist in a kind of cheerful, cross-pollinating cognitive dissonance." One of Natalie Barney's many lovers was Romaine Brooks, an American ex-patriot recorded in history as both a lesbian and bisexual. Brooks' was a painter most famous for her androgynous portraits of lesbians, masculine women, and female dandies that circulated within Barney's famous salons. Her paintings reveal early twentieth century non-normative gender performance and identities, depicted the range of gender expressions of women such as Gertrude Stein, Una Troubridge, Radcliffe Hall, Nancy Cunard, Colette, Ida Rubinstein, and many others. Harris and Brissey's 21st century performance event recreated and recontextualized these queer, artistic, and intellectual spaces, taking the work of Romaine Brooks and Barney's salon as impetus for the creative interrogation of gender and sexuality in this collaborative endeavor.
Within the larger event of the salon/party/exhibition, I performed a solo that layered spoken text and burlesque. Delivering a monologue that moved between lecture and manifesto on the performance and fluidity of gender and desire, I interacted with the audience as one might have within the historical setting of a Parisian salon, expounding a philosophy of bodies and gender, while grounding that philosophy in the gestures of a dancing body. Working from the burlesque idiom, gradually bringing more and more of my bare skin into view, I presented my body as a site at which resistance to the gender binary is performed.
Press:
-"The secret sexualities of artists and performers explored in ’20 Rue Jacob’ happening now," GayRVA.com
-"Amazons on the Dance Floor: '20 Rue Jacob' brings the Parisian world of artist Romaine Brooks to life through multimedia performances," Richmond Magazine
-"Rue Dufour: Local Artists Acknowledge Gender Progress by Re-Creating a Lesbian Salon of the 1920s," Style Weekly
20 Rue Jacob is the address of writer Natalie Clifford Barney's former home on the Left Bank of Paris. It was here that she held famous salons during the early twentieth century, for which writers, artists, philosophers, dancers, and musicians would gather to eat, drink, dance, and share their work and ideas. Salon visitors included Isadora Duncan, T. S. Eliot, Virgil Thompson, Pablo Picasso, Ezra Pound, Sinclair Lewis, Truman Capote, Marcel Proust, and Greta Garbo, among many others. These salons also served as safe spaces for lesbian-identified women in Paris to socialize in more intimate settings. Author and playwright Joan Schenkar describes Barney's salon as "a place where lesbian assignations and appointments with academics could co-exist in a kind of cheerful, cross-pollinating cognitive dissonance." One of Natalie Barney's many lovers was Romaine Brooks, an American ex-patriot recorded in history as both a lesbian and bisexual. Brooks' was a painter most famous for her androgynous portraits of lesbians, masculine women, and female dandies that circulated within Barney's famous salons. Her paintings reveal early twentieth century non-normative gender performance and identities, depicted the range of gender expressions of women such as Gertrude Stein, Una Troubridge, Radcliffe Hall, Nancy Cunard, Colette, Ida Rubinstein, and many others. Harris and Brissey's 21st century performance event recreated and recontextualized these queer, artistic, and intellectual spaces, taking the work of Romaine Brooks and Barney's salon as impetus for the creative interrogation of gender and sexuality in this collaborative endeavor.
Within the larger event of the salon/party/exhibition, I performed a solo that layered spoken text and burlesque. Delivering a monologue that moved between lecture and manifesto on the performance and fluidity of gender and desire, I interacted with the audience as one might have within the historical setting of a Parisian salon, expounding a philosophy of bodies and gender, while grounding that philosophy in the gestures of a dancing body. Working from the burlesque idiom, gradually bringing more and more of my bare skin into view, I presented my body as a site at which resistance to the gender binary is performed.
Press:
-"The secret sexualities of artists and performers explored in ’20 Rue Jacob’ happening now," GayRVA.com
-"Amazons on the Dance Floor: '20 Rue Jacob' brings the Parisian world of artist Romaine Brooks to life through multimedia performances," Richmond Magazine
-"Rue Dufour: Local Artists Acknowledge Gender Progress by Re-Creating a Lesbian Salon of the 1920s," Style Weekly
20 Rue Jacob from Courtney Harris on Vimeo.
Left of Canvas
Left of Canvas is a short film directed by Charli Brissey and Courtney Harris that is directly related to 20 Rue Jacob, also inspired by the life and work of Romaine Brooks. The film was shot in a variety of locations beginning in May 2014, and includes the same cast of performers that participated in 20 Rue Jacob. Instead of a traditional film festival style screening, Brissey and Harris separated Left of Canvas into a variety of video and sound installations throughout the Hoffheimer Building.
Left of Canvas Trailer 1 from Charli Brissey on Vimeo.