Choreographer Yasmeen Godder, who was born in Jerusalem and then moved to New York (where she studied at the High School of Performing Arts and Tisch School of the Arts at NYU), opened her new work entitled “Singular Sensation” at the Kitchen in New York City this past Thursday night.
This piece features five dancers who create a horror movie-esque feel and scene. They “slap themselves and poke out their tongues; they stick scissors in their (fake) breasts and wield blood-red talons on their fingers; they eat their appendages and vomit them out; they wrap their heads in stockings and smear green paint and red jelly over their bodies. By the end, they are drenched in sweat and goo”, according to a recent New York Times article entitled “With Flesh Like This, Who Needs Food?” (which can be read here).
The ultimate purpose of this dance is for the dancers and audience members to bring focus to sensations and consciousness. I think that through the grotesque and provocative nature of this performance, such a focus is reached. However, I personally find this display disturbing.
Take a look at a snippet from “Singular Sensation” here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_aWh-noZqk
What do you think?
Dance, because it uses the human body, is often about primal human instincts. sometimes these are couched in polite images and stories, sometime the dance is more about our basic animal nature and speaks in universal themes of power, violence, love, sex, etc. The physicality of the medium brings a potent immediacy to the dance.