An Effigy (To The Girl of Our Dreams)

Video

2021

Commissioned for PUSH.PULL’s festival of cabaret/burlesque performance with Buddies In Bad Times and Aluna Theatre.

An exploration of the aesthetic and philosophical through-lines between the Cabaret theatre and 70s Punk subcultures.

Split into three movements we are invited to bear witness to this cautionary tale. We covet the girl of our dreams, for she represents the virility of youth, a teenage dream, our projected desire, the conflated infantilization/commodification of the femme body.

Lifting choreography from the virgin sacrifice of Pina Bausch’s “The Rite of Spring”, we reopen a conversation surrounding how the femme body “is sacrificed to gratify the misogyny of the surrounding men”.

What are the Psychological ramifications for these practices?

For the idol, and for ourselves?

How do we sleep at night after what we've done?