Danse Perdue: Attitudes Passionnelles

Danse Perdue/Death Posture present: ATTITUDES PASSIONNELLES, A CELEBRATION: 50 YEARS OF BUTOH DANCE, 10,000 YEARS OF HYSTERIA. In the latter half of the 19th century at the Salpetriere asylum for insane and incurable women in Paris, medical teacher and clinician Jean-Martin Charcot began an exhaustive photographic documentation of the inmates diagnosed as hysterics. He held the notorious “Tuesday Lectures” during which hysterical attacks and tableaux of hypnotic suggestion would be induced/performed for an audience. As we created this work, we sought a becoming-hysteric inside our bodies to erupt in unknown voices and movements and to mutate recognizable movements and voices into strange, irrevocably compelled creatures. Dancers: Lin Lucas, Douglas Ridings, Ariel Denham, Kaoru Okumura, and Katrina Sirena with Danse Perdue (Vanessa Skantze, Alex Ruhe). Sound collaborators: celadon, Noise Poet Nobody, and Herpes Hideaway.