I Can't See Why: An Homage to Loïe Fuller, Yvonne Rainer, and CoCo Loupe
This solo premiered in the FIERCE International Queer Burlesque Festival —the first international queer burlesque festival —at Wall Street Night Club, May 4, 2013. It was re-staged in Willkommen to Crimson Lace Cabaret at Wall Street Night Club, September 6, 2014.
The piece moves in the space between voyeurism and surveillance, bringing attention to the spectatorship apparatus that structures the performer/audience relationship in burlesque. The piece involves a live performance on stage danced in synch with a video of the same piece that is projected onto screens that surround the audience on all sides. The live dancing takes place facing away from the audience, withholding the act of undressing from view —or undressing as if not for the audience's gaze —positioning the audience more as voyeurs. Simultaneously, the dance that takes place in the digital/projected space of the video projections takes place facing the camera and is intercut with close-ups of my eyes, returning the viewer's gaze and simulating the effect of the audience being viewed —or surveilled — from all sides.
The piece draws vocabulary and cues from Loïe Fuller —the voluminous circle skirt and its role in revealing/concealing the body underneath —Yvonne Rainer —averting the performer's gaze from the audience and presenting a spectacular anti-spectacle —and CoCo Loupe, who provided original movement material that was developed and abstracted in the choreography. By utilizing movement vocabulary from both contemporary dance and burlesque idioms, I Can't See Why invites viewers to consider the sexuality of contemporary dance and the technique of burlesque.
Music: "I Can't See Why" by Baxter
The piece moves in the space between voyeurism and surveillance, bringing attention to the spectatorship apparatus that structures the performer/audience relationship in burlesque. The piece involves a live performance on stage danced in synch with a video of the same piece that is projected onto screens that surround the audience on all sides. The live dancing takes place facing away from the audience, withholding the act of undressing from view —or undressing as if not for the audience's gaze —positioning the audience more as voyeurs. Simultaneously, the dance that takes place in the digital/projected space of the video projections takes place facing the camera and is intercut with close-ups of my eyes, returning the viewer's gaze and simulating the effect of the audience being viewed —or surveilled — from all sides.
The piece draws vocabulary and cues from Loïe Fuller —the voluminous circle skirt and its role in revealing/concealing the body underneath —Yvonne Rainer —averting the performer's gaze from the audience and presenting a spectacular anti-spectacle —and CoCo Loupe, who provided original movement material that was developed and abstracted in the choreography. By utilizing movement vocabulary from both contemporary dance and burlesque idioms, I Can't See Why invites viewers to consider the sexuality of contemporary dance and the technique of burlesque.
Music: "I Can't See Why" by Baxter