Created by the Post Natyam Collective, this world premiere of “the sins of such wonderful flesh” will weave together audience participatory structures, video, and South Asian abhinaya to queer the gaze, performing erotically charged desire between women.  The work is inspired by Maud Allan, a white female North American dance artist who toured her “Oriental” dances in Europe at the turn of the 20th century. “the sins of such wonderful flesh” asks: what would it mean for a brown female spectator to perform desire for Maud Allan-as-Salome? What is the difference between desire and identification (aka self-exotification)? How might we flip or blur the roles of “spectator” and “performer” through strategic activation of the audience? How might the erotic charge and fluid reciprocity of South Asian abhinaya complicate the power dynamics of looking? How might deep rootedness in South Asian performance aesthetics disturb or cut against the grain of Orientalist appropriation and exotification in Allan’s work?

EXPLODE! Queer Dance Festival re-imagines the potential of queer dance today. Queerness, in activism and art making, has always pivoted on the promise of coalition. Lesbian, trans, bi, gay, and queer people can come together and make something with their sweat and their bodies. Yet sexism, racism, classism, and transphobia have kept that promise from being fully realized in practice.  EXPLODE! takes on this challenge. The two-night festival, hosted by fierce desi drag queen LaWhore Vagistan and curated by dance scholar Clare Croft, features a range of dance forms – including South Asian dance, improvisation, Indigenous performances, and drag – danced by artists from across the US and around the world.

 

EXPLODE! Queer Dance Festival

Friday, May 31, 8 pm

Saturday, June 1, 6 pm

Culver Center for the Arts

3824 + 3834 Main Street

Riverside, CA 92501

Tickets: $9.99

Information: https://ucrarts.ucr.edu/Program/explode-dance