What sex might mean to you right now

The erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings. […] For the erotic is not a question only of what we do; it is a question of how acutely and fully we can feel in the doing. – Audre Lorde

On my way back from Helsinki, where I saw a couple of performances during Moving In November Dance Festival*, I re-read Uses of the Erotic: The

Cutlass spring

Produced by Dana Michel
Executive Producer: Par B.L.eux
Created and performed by Dana Michel
Artistic Activators: Ellen Furey, Peter James, Heidi Louis, Mathieu Léger, Roscoe Michel, Karlyn Percil, Yoan Sorin, Alanna Stuart
Sound Consultant: David Drury
Lighting Design: Karine Gauthier
Technical Directors: Caroline Nadeau + Karine Gauthier
Distribution: Key Performance

Seen in Helsinki, Moving in November Festival 2019

OIT, Black Box teater, March 10 -11 2020

Erotic as Power (1978) by Audre Lorde. In her classic essay, Lorde reclaims the erotic as a resource of feminine power by critically analyzing and rejecting how the concept has been used by the Western patriarchy as a tool for oppressing women, especially Black women and women of color.

Watching CUTLASS SPRING by Montréal based choreographer Dana Michel for the second time, I had to think about the constant renegotiating of what it means to be a sexual being. Or as Michel writes in the program text: «How might I locate my sexual identity within a multitude of complimentary and seemingly contradictory identities – as a performer, as a mother, as a daughter, as a lover, as a stranger?»

Myriad of nonsense

CUTLASS SPRING, is one of those performative proposals that could just keep on going. Having seen Yellow Towel (2014), Michel’s first internationally acclaimed solo, and having read about the sequel, Mercurial George (2016), it seems that Michel’s work follows a logic of continuation. In each of the three solos, a commitment to specific research methods and mechanisms occurs, functioning as the motor of an artistic world that Michel, together with her collaborators, shapes for the audiences and herself.

Moving In November Dance Festival has since the 1980s been crucial in connecting the Finnish dance scene with key international artists, and has supported Michel’s trajectory since she started. In each performance, Michel transforms herself into a strange and at times clownesque character, guiding us through what could be described as a ritual, a ceremony, or a scientific experiment. She mumbles, hums and produces rhythms as if some kind of shaman speaking in tongues. The combination of Michel’s performative state and her encounters with everyday objects creates both a textual and textural friction, invoking cultural and personal references without ever holding on to them. What the audience might see in the images that Michel leads us through, probably says more about our own projection than the artist or the artistic proposal itself.

For example, in CUTLASS SPRING there are several moments where Michel sits on objects or sound devices as if she is hatching a thought or a plan. She moves around in clothes that are too big as if not fitting is a way of fitting in. Out of her pocket she pulls a big fork, using it as some kind of exploration tool to navigate around the space. Michel plays with the notion of scale. Identical objects appear and reappear in different sizes. Then, more and more elements are added to the organized mess: a splurging of ice cubes, a broken old phone, songs that come from strange places such as a tin that says «Horlicks Malted Milk» – a milk powder described to me by the Internet as having been «essential to Arctic exploration, war and ice cream parlors».

I have listened to critiques from colleagues about the similarities in Michel’s solos and the character that Michel plays, or, as some have put it, «hides behind». I can understand these critical notes as much as I can sympathize with the impatience or slight annoyance expressed by certain audience members to the often slow pace of Michel’s explorations. That said, these emotional reactions might simply belong to the work that Michel lays out. How do we relate to a myriad of nonsense – an invitation of surrender, to a journey that doesn’t seem to lead anywhere?

Manifesto

«CUTLASS SPRING is what sex might mean to me right now», Michel says in a text that accompanies the performance. The work is further described as «a manifesto and a heated reflection, an ethnography of sexual understanding and an archeology of desire». It’s maybe interesting to mention that after having seen the performance twice, few people seem to mention the proposed topic of sexuality – as if it wasn’t there, as if it could pass as unseen or unspoken. This might be one of the most compelling frictions in CUTLASS SPRING as it contemplates a world of pornography, sexuality and eroticism that has excluded bodies and fantasies, but refuses to give away explicit answers – moving away from what a manifesto is expected to look like or sound like.

Throughout the solo, we witness a sensual, but also odd meditation on textures: texture as fabric, as space, as sound, as body. We seem to watch a constant state of unfolding, one that at times also erupts. Chairs might suddenly be thrown around and in no time a spatial setup will have transformed entirely. Even when Michel leaves the theatre for a moment and we are left with the debris of her search, we can feel her presence as if the walls of the black box are yet another layer. The statement in the program text somehow lingers with me: What might it mean to me right now – sex?

I am not sure if this is the place to project personal ideas about the erotic or sexuality, but let’s say that I have seen and keep seeing a lot of dance performances that are interested in exploring these topics, and that most often I simply cannot relate to them, even when they claim to come from a feminist or queer perspective. It’s a bit of a lonely place to be in. In that sense Michel’s proposal comes as a relief, as something I can relate to. Maybe it’s about a more hidden dimension of sexuality, something more uncertain and continuous – less in your face. Maybe it is like the title implies: a sexuality like a sailor’s sword («cutlass»), a season after winter and before summer, an elastic entity that can be pressed or pulled but will always return to its former shape. Something that sits between points of tension, absorbing the constant wiggling of our senses.

* https://movinginnovember.fi/