The Body Fracture Workshop offers participants a creative atelier and outlet to explore questions of body identity, especially concerning the enduring cultural mystique of female martial artists.
The workshop will begin by discussing questions concerning the subjectivity of bodily perception. Participants will then be asked to write their observations on a plank of wood, and will be encouraged to expose personal observations and explorations of duality, the symbolism surrounding the female body, and iconography of superheroines in our imagination and in society.  
What will follow is a series of lessons in basic striking techniques, the search for individual sound (a short yell called the “kiai”), and the application of board breaking — derived from the karate Kyokoshin. The sound of each participant will be recorded and used to create an installation entitled Sounds and Artifacts, to be presented at the Bleu Chat Boxing Club March 8th through 10th as part of the Edgy Women Festival programming.
Sounds and Artifacts is an installation that will involve the participation of sound artist Magali Babin. Using audio from the Body Fracture workshop, the public will be invited to revisit the sounds — the footsteps, cries and rubble of broken wooden planks.

With a background in the world of theatre creation, Catherine L. Massecar has turned to exploring performance and interdisciplinary intervention art practices. Completing her master’s degree at the Université du Québec à Montréal, her program focused on the artistic infiltration of art in urban areas. In 2006, Catherine founded Péristyle Nomade, a company dedicated to new artistic avenues, mainly dedicating itself to direction, as well as the undertaking of personal and creative research in nano-performance. Over the last 15 years, Catherine has been interested in and inspired by Choy Lee Fut kung fu, medieval weapons training, kickboxing and karate Kyokoshin, which has undoubtedly influenced her artistic approach.

Magali Babin fiddles with noises and sounds, sounds and noises; she performs, improvises, composes and exposes. She has produced concerts in international music festivals in Canada, the United States and Europe. Her recent sound installations have been presented at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal’s triennale Québécoise in 2011, the Quebec International Festival of multidisciplinary and electronic art in Quebec City, and the Louise et Reuben-Cohen Gallery in Moncton Unviersity
Magail collaborates regularly with André Éric Létourneau et Alexandre St-Onge and the mineminemine collective, Le Quatuor de tourne-disques de Martin Tétreault, the nocinema.org project of French artist Jérôme Joy, and has been collaborating with Herman Kolgen since 2010. The duo recently presented a sound and media installation entitled Flesh-Wood-Metal.
Since 2010 Magali has co-directed a series of sonal art, 24Gauche, at the Espace Project gallery in the Villeray neighbourhood. She is currently a guest curator at the Verticale Gallery where she is currently directing the Audioparc programming in the 2012-2013 season.

Cost: $75 (Emploi-Québec)


This workshop is for aspiring directors / live-performers / independent or half-funded or maybe too shy writers who want to direct other people. Marijs also wants to provide a place for questions and meeting others for anybody who is new to scenography or the professional theatre scene.

This is not a ‘psychodrama class’ or ‘drama workshop’, or about work ethics, this is more about creation, practical collaboration with actors or co-creators. A practical confrontation with the space/objects/meanings around us to make something happen with what keeps you busy and the divine faith that everything you’ll need, is always there. This is a starting point to look for the moment when something really happens on stage or in public space.
Marijs Boulogne began studying drama at the RITS (Brussels) in 1996. While still a student, she began writing, producing and performing her own works. Her first production, a “mystical fable” called Love Zero Control, dealt with God, femininity and ecstasy. She later went on to create the Buelens Paulina Cie theatre company, co-founded with Bart Capelle and Manah Depauw. As an end-of-studies project, Marijs creates Endless Medication, which was presented at the KunstenFESTIVALdesarts in Brussels in 2003, and selected the same year at the Theaterfestival in Antwerp.
In addition, she studied open workshop, new media, installation, and interdisciplinary work for an extra year, supporting her thesis with the installation Fuck Me Dead/Excavations, which addresses themes of self-sacrifice using performance, video and embroidery.

In her more recent works, Marijs continues her investigation of the intimate nature of feminine sexuality (secretions, fluids, mucous membranes), on the border between friendship and betrayal, innocence and obscenity, ecstasy, desire, and lust. Her imaginative theatrical language hits the minds and is characterized by its frankness.
A true creative “centipede,” Marijs combines her passions and talents as a playwright, theatre director, musician, and actress, while also giving in to her love of “creating of her own hands” through embroidery and crochet. She enjoys working with children and people who have no experience in theatre. Since 2011, RITS asked her to share the fruits of her 10 years of theatre experience with their students. As visiting professor, Marijs Boulogne offers classes in set design from the perspective of the director.

Registration

Space is limited & reservations are recommended at 514.393.3771 or by email at info@studio303.ca. A $20 deposit is required.

RQD members are eligible for a partial reimbursement for non Emploi-Quebec workshops.

For Emploi-Quebec subsidized workshops, please contact us for eligibility requirements.

We only accept cash or cheques.

You can either mail a cheque or come and pay at our office during business hours.

Reimbursement policy

- No reimbursement for the occasional missed class.

- Sickness/ injury: total reimbursement of missed classes, including the initial deposit if none of the classes has been followed.

- Scheduling conflict: partial reimbursement (non-applicable if there is a waiting list). We keep $20 as an administration fee.

- Planned absences: possibility of a special rate.

- Other situations: evaluated on a case per case basis

Je suis une militante féministe peu versée dans le domaine artistique et pour la première fois, j’ai eu le grand bonheur de plonger dans l’expérience du Festival Edgy Women 2012 en tant que participante, blogueuse, conférencière et MC de talk-shows (oups, MC pour Maîtresse de cérémonie… prononcer avec l’accent de votre choix). Oui, des “talk-shows” en français avec un titre français (« Art : sport de combat » et « Quand art et sexe font corps »), six panelistes francophones du Québec et de France et deux anglophone qui interviennent en français, yes sir madame.

Le soir de la fabuleuse performance de Andréanne Leclerc intitulée “In Succube” (ô, mais c’est dans quelle langue ça?), on m’a raconté cette belle petite histoire. Une membre de l’audience aurait demandé “C’est en français ou en anglais le spectacle” ce à quoi on lui a répondu “C’est en contorsion”. Et pour tout vous dire, la majorité des événements du festival se déroulaient en français.

En écrivant « je me demande si pour elles la vraie forme d’audace ne serait pas de se donner un nom français pour leur prochaine édition », vous me rappelez ce que je hais du nationalisme québécois de base, raciste, xénophobe et négationniste de son colonialisme. Hérouville quelqu’unE? Quand vous regardez seulement l’aspect linguistique du titre d’un festival, à qui et à quoi ouvrez vous la porte? Ais-je besoin de rappeler que les politiques identitaires fondées sur l’écrasement des minorités par la majorité, ici franco-québécoise-de-souche, ont trop souvent marché main dans la main avec le fascisme, du plus petit au plus grand? Je ne veux rien d’un Québec qui se ferme sur le monde, qui refuse la diversité par peur de l’autre, du repli sur soi. Je ne veux rien d’un Québec qui nie son passé et son présent de peuple colonisateur.

Edgy Women, avant d’avoir un titre anglais, est un festival féministe offrant une vitrine à des femmes artistes qui ont des propositions propres à nous remuer, à nous bousculer, qui repoussent les limites pour mieux susciter la réflexion ou la prise de conscience. Edgy permet ça. Et à l’opposé, votre article obtus nous empêche de poser le regard au-delà du titre qui, certes, est en anglais.

Vous le savez, notre cher Québec est une terre fertile pour les artistes d’ici et d’ailleurs qui se produisent dans la langue de leur choix et qui font rayonner ce qu’il y a de beau ici. Devrait-on condamner Ariane Moffatt d’avoir choisi de chanter quelques pièces en anglais?; Marco Calliari en Italien (“We No Speak Americano” quelqu’unE)?; Lhasa de Sela en Espagnol?; Bïa en Portugais?; Jim Corcoran en français?

Sans nier les rapports de domination historiques de l’anglais sur le français, et depuis Waterloo des anglais sur les français, et en reconnaissant l’importance de la préservation du français, du québécois et du joual, je me permets de situer ce rapport des peuples et des individuEs à la langue dans une constellation beaucoup plus complexes recouvrant une multitude d’autres rapports de domination, d’oppression et de privilèges.

Edgy Women fait tout sauf nous enfermer. Edgy nous offre une occasion de faire éclater nos cadres et de se réfléchir autrement, dans la plus belle des diversités qui soit. Dois-je rappeler que c’est un festival d’art féministe? Et ça, votre article n’en parle pas. Shame.

///

Pour lire le triste article original de Sophie Durocher, paru le 10 avril 2012 dans le Journal de Montréal:

http://www.journaldemontreal.com/2012/04/10/arretez-de-vous-mordre-la-langue

Getting to the bottom of this lie is at the crux of this year’s headlining bill Les Demimondes, whose Operation Snatch played at Studio 303 March 30 to April 1.

Featuring a veteran Edgy troupe via Toronto consisting of syndicated Montreal Mirror sex columnist Alexandra Tigchelaar (Sasha Van Bon Bon), Cat Nimmo (Kitty Neptune) Jesse Dell and Andrya Duff, their evolved work (described as ‘Dada-ist cabaret’) is all about the complex relationship and history sex workers have with art, media and law.

And oh, did these women ever have a story to tell about whores.

Smart, satirical and full of moxie, the multi-media performance engages video art and dance where whores tell their own narratives — with Prostitution Herself delivering monologues that cut to the heart of the way their stories have been culturally misappropriated and misrepresented over the last 3,000 years of whore-hating. She asks us to consider, “Were these women fallen or were they pushed?”

ART: “A whore, wrapped in an actress, wrapped in a whore; a metawhore.”

Exploring nuances between so-called “high” and “low” art, the first act of Operation Snatch sets a tone with Prostitution Herself handily taking down 20th century critic, satirist, and enemy of whores Dorothy Parker in her first monologue. See, Parker once purported that “you can lead a whore to culture but you cannot make her think,” while Le Demimondes assert that, in fact, whores are culture.

Perching her pelvis atop a bed with red satin sheets, Prostitution Herself mimes a mounted fucking gesture. “Culture,” she argues, thrusting, “is on top of us all the time.”

Punctuating her point throughout, Operation Snatch explores and re-imagines a variety of prostitution-based pop culture from the ages. La Travaiata, The Police’s infamous “Roxanne,” 1971 hooker-slasher film Klute, Toddlers and Tiaras, and especially the iconic images ofPretty Woman, are whipped down to size by deconstructive attention to their hollow mainstream whore narratives.

Besides, we’re asked, who profits from the art work of sex work? What is a muse worth on canvas and in person? What are the bullshit themes in stories we hear about whores all the time and why are they forever being regurgitated?

The Message is the Media

“I have never felt vulnerable with a client like I do with the media,” declared Tigchelaar after the curtain came down and the artists spoke at an informal Q&A with Edgy Artistic Director Miriam Ginestier.

Tigchelaar lamented she is exhausted of “having morality conversations” with reporters and needing to forever push beyond the religious fundamentalism bent in the kinds of questions she’s asked as both a sex worker and artist.

“We’re trying to strike a different chord about sex work,” she tells us. “Sex is a part of culture as well, but sex workers have no privilege. The representations out there are not made by sex workers. But we see, and want to comment on it, too. [...] But the biggest betrayal I have ever had was by the media.”

Tigchelaar’s desire for ‘real talk’ in whore reportage, specifically the way their stories are told and who are telling them, found a prominent place onstage. Snatch turns the tables on the media-makers who make working girls feel “constantly interrogated” about their choices of work and what myths are perpetuated through this medium.

Calling out bad journalism from the sensationalist exposé’s of eras bygone right up to a contemporary Toronto blogger notorious for outing and shaming sex workers, Opearation Snatch takes aim at the way whores are marginalized and criminalized in the cultural production of ‘news.’

Fear is the mother of morality – Nietzsche

While this play cackles along, tight-trope-walking all you thought you knew about the work and lives of whores with a lively array of performance and dance, perhaps what is the more compelling than hilarious wit is the feeling that you’re finally hearing a different voice explain what it is to do the oldest profession in history yet receive none of the cultural kudos.

“I enjoy my job. There’s validity in my work,” says Nimmo during a monologue, radiant in a white power suit as she looks each audience member directly in the eye. “Humans need intimacy, spaces to work through the problems with monogamy and the stifling ideas we have about our partnerships.”

Sharing what she’s learned about affection, tolerance, and the changing needs and desires between people, Nimmo spoke to her work as an escort as “the most enriching job I’ve ever had.” Admitting she unabashedly enjoys what she does. And we can tell. It’s really beautiful.

The realness of the women onstage is undoubtedly the best part about this performance. Their downright heart and humanity cuts through whatever preconceived notions out there we might have believed, but can’t anymore. And, under the red lights, I couldn’t help but feel like something timeless was liberated in the studio those nights.

If shame has pursued whores forever, it is a play like this that will put an end to it.

(Text by “Lois Lane”)

B12 – “Même si on a passé plus de temps su’l cul que sur nos patins, on a donné notre 110% sur la glace. Les joueuses et le goaleur, seul gars d’la place, on sué leur vie pour cette expérimentation artistico-sportive. On a trippé.”

Radikale – Est-ce que quand c’est des femmes qui on le gros bout du bâton et jouent avec la puck, ça devient un sport féministe?

B12 – “Excellente question! Disons les choses comme elles sont : la puck est toujours noire, donc c’est plutôt un sport anarchiste… Y’avait pas ben ben de rose ou de mauve sur la patinoire. Quoi que, à bien y penser, peut-être le fait des joueuses élite des Martletts (NDLR: Équipe de hockey féminin de l’université McGill) ou qui avaient joué avec les Stars de Montréal jouaient côte à côte avec celles qui n’avaient patiné qu’une seule fois dans leur vie montre quand même un haut niveau d’ouverture. Et sans jamais jouer du coude hein… C’était compétitif dans les concours de buvage de bière su’l banc, mais pas su’à glace. On comptait même pas les points…”

Radikale – J’ai entendu dire que la Ref., Meg. E. Winks, aussi organisatrice de l’événement, y est allée de fantaisies et a décidé de changer les règles…

B12 – “Ben oui toé, c’était complètement absurde. Au lieu de faire les pénalités sur le banc, toutes les personnes impliquées dans un accrochage accidentel ou non – et dieu sait qu’il y en a eu! – devaient se mettre chume avec la voisine et patiner avec elle en se tenant par les coudes jusqu’à ce que la Ref. se rappelle qu’il y avait deux dindes de pognées l’une après l’autres su’à glace. Peu propice à scorer, ces moments d’intimité d’odeur et de sueur on plutôt permit des rapprochements inter-calibre entre les joueuses (toutes des femm*s) des deux équipes…”

Radikale – Justement, quel était le nom de votre équipe?

B12 – « N’en déplaise à la Société St-Jean Baptiste et au MERQ (Mouvement des étudiants responsables du Québec, aka prout), on s’est donné le nom des « Strikers » surtout parce que ça sonne hot, mais un peu aussi en soutien à la lutte actuelle contre la hausse de 1625$ des frais de scolarité… On était quelques-unes à porter fièrement le carré rouge sur not’ Jersey. GO STRIKERS! (NDLR : Elles ont perdu)»

Radikale – Dites-moi, pourquoi B12? C’pas un nom de sportive me semble? Pourquoi pas Kovalevisky ou Marcovette ou encore Gouinez?

B12 – « En tant que ex-jamais-vraiment-été-athlète, Edgy-Hockey m’a permis de me rebrancher sur les « bienfaits du sport sur la santé et le moral ». Parfait timing avec la fin du mois de mars gris foncé. Pis comme je suis plus souvent les mains sur clavier, ou euh… que sur un bâton de hockey, ben ça m’a comme repompé sa femme d’aller me faire aller sur la patinoire. J’avais pensé à Séroto, mais ça fait ben trop intello. Faque c’est ça, B12 all the way. »

Radikale – Répéteriez-vous l’expérience?

B12 – “Anytime! D’ailleurs, je suis en pourparlers avec Miriam Ginestier, la grande cheffe du festival Edgy-Women pour la convaincre d’organiser un festival par mois, histoire qu’on puisse jouer au hockey plus souvent. Mais bon, si jamais ça marche pas, y’a toujours la “Lovely Hockey Ligue” encore pilotée par Meg qui ouvre ses portes aux ceuzes qui savent un peu jouer et patiner, sans faire de chichi sur la qualité de votre habillement ni sur l’emploi de jurons. Je pense que c’est fait pour moi.”

Radikale – Au fait, une game de hockey dans un festival d’art féministe : what the fuck?

B12 – « Aucune idée. Faut demander à Miriam, la DG… mais mon 6e sens me dit que ça s’ra pas la dernière… À l’année prochaine gang! GO STRIKERS! »

///

B12 – “C’que j’vous ai pas dit c’est que c’était mon rêve de petite fille de jouer au hockey pour vrai, sur une vraie patinoire zambonisée, avec un vrai casque et des vrais gants de hockey, mais que les caves de p’tits morveux de mon quartier, armés du grand patriarcat n’ont jamais voulu me laisser monter sur la patinoire. Alors pour moi, cette game de edgy-hockey, c’était un safe space pour vraiment réaliser un rêve de barb-baby-butch qui n’avait jamais pu être réalisé avant. Merci Edgy.”

///

* Checkez le blogue de Meg. E Winks, aka Hockey Dyke in Canada: http://hockeydykeincanada.ca

* Pour jouer dans la LOVELY HOCKEY LEAGUE, écrivez à Meg ici: http://hockeydykeincanada.ca/contact/

Today, a dozen or so of us sat around and spoke about what we had seen over the last few weeks, and it’s amazing what you can learn about the choices of an artist when you have them there in the flesh to motivate what they did with their flesh onstage a few nights prior.

Today’s conference—animated (so, so literally) by our Edgy co-blogger Barb Legault—featured a duo from Je Baise les Yeux, Gaelle Bourges and Mirianne Chargois from France, as well as Montreal-based Adréane Leclerc and Studio 303 Artistic Director MIriam Ginestier.

This made for quite the lineup.

Over the course of the two-hour exchange, the panellists discussed the ‘dramaturgie du corps,’ the contact performance art has with the spectator, diversity onstage, the ways that sex as a subject in art toes the lines of violence, voyeurism, power, and what is/is not acceptable in “public.”

Organizing a lineup of female-produced perfo always manages to meander into these spaces, explained Ginestier, as she often finds herself asking: is what we’re doing sensationalist?

This year’s festival, for those following, has heavily touched on the themes of sex and performance WORK, (operative word being ‘work’) it takes to maintain and explore the fantasies of the erotic. And the general U Pop consensus between the artists was that certain kinds of corporeal voyage and presentation reveal things that some people, quite frankly, are still not ready to take.

This point of “ready exploration” in particular meandered in a lot of directions during the discussion, both over the open session and the audience-led Q&A period. We got into a conversation about the divisions between French feminism and North American feminism (which we could write a book about), as well as the assumptions attached to to the smut/art divide unfortunately attached to the performance works of women.

(Like the pattern where, for example, many people often search for a victim narrative in sex work, with this assumption that no woman could actually enjoy doing what they do to make a living.)

We also got into the differences in reception between pro-sex, queer audiences and hetero, “high art” enthusiasts.

But what stuck long after the latte’s were gone and were getting hungry was something that validated the last post: In Succube, which was shown twice yesterday at 8 and 10:30 p.m. and felt like an entirely different show. The early show had seven walkouts, the 10:30 bill was nearly sold-out and was given a thunderous standing ovation.

Why the difference? Contact with the spectator. The public has the power to change the show entirely. How an audience engages with the body, and what is done with it, changes everything.

“Neither; it’s contortion. You’ll like it.”

Without knowing it at the time, this exchange—heard on the winding stairs of the Sala Rossa before tonight’s Edgy performance In Succube—would truly mark the very essence of the post you’re about to read. The two-second dialogue, quite simply, hit at the heart of the problems writers face sometimes with reviewing performance art: It is the most beautiful problem in the world, perhaps.

The thing is (especially in this case), the folks reviewing performance work recognize that what we’ve seen is so next-level, so out-of-the-linguistic-paradigm, that we can hardly name it, despite desperately wanting to give it the accurate accolades it deserves. And while stringing along the words that make sense for each moment is something we are expected to do, I always worry: can we do it justice? Should we even try? Especially when talking out-of-the-box theatre.

The senses we felt there aren’t French, not English. And looking at the notes scribbled in between moments of awe during this show is like looking at a sexy, scrambled map. They include the following:

- naked legs, black heels
- teasing red fabric
- eery humming
- wine, water
- wide eyes, open mouth, demon tongue
- [a badly drawn diagram I'm too embarrassed to scan]
- distorted orgasm
- transfixed nude, muscles, breasts, bellies
- unbraiding and pulling hair
- passing water mouth to mouth
- giggling, moaning
- masturbation… with a leg

Maybe you had to be there, right?

It’s difficult to truly recapture the effect of mascara running down her cheeks as she covered her naked demon-partner in blood from a turtle shell. How could one situate the siren calls, the sound of seagulls, the straddling angular limbs successfully? Why attempt to decode what they could possibly have signified when they just existed — so purely, so viscerally — before us? Does describing the ways these two extraordinary women straddle both each other and the lines of pain and pleasure, sisterhood and sex partner, really make any difference if you couldn’t possibly recreate those physical, intimate moments in any other fashion? How do you write a post where you’re not entirely sure how to describe the journey you know you just took?

All I can say is keep watching these women and their experimental theatre, Montreal.

Circus star Andréane Leclerc has a mastery of body unparallelled. Cabaret artist Holly Gauthier-Frankel, also known as “Miss Sugarpuss,” is the kind of performer you don’t have enough eyes in your head for. Lisa Gamble (Gambletron) a multi instrumentalist noise artist, brought the whole thing together through chimes, breath and ingeniously-placed microphones.

It’s there. It’s brilliant. It’s something you hope they tour around again and again, so we can begin to unravel it.

In their program, the only clue we had of this journey was the following: Nous suivre dans un monde ou rien n’est vraiment claire et tout est suggéré.

The rest is too real for a re-read.

- – -

TOMORROW artists from In Succube and Je Baise Les Yeux will be speaking at an Edgy U-Pop conference with Studio 303 Artistic Director Miriam Ginestier, hosted by my co-blogger Barb. It’s going down at the Casa del Popolo at 2p.m. Be there. (I know I certainly have questions.) And if you can’t make it, follow me on Twitter at @LauraBeeston for the fun.

< Editor's Note

I came back to this post after tossing and turning for about an hour thinking about the program tonight while the Meow Mixers danced.

See, any smart so-called art's writer would never actually admit they couldn't find the words to fit what was before them because saying something like this out loud leaves us in a very vulnerable position in terms of critic cred.

So I wanted to clarify something...

I do think I get it. Two travelling demons, pushing their kinky, contortionist limits; corporeal cabin fever; horny devils dominating and submitting to each other with, just, the most straight-up water/blood/nut/blanket symbolism giving it that kick.

This was the journey. It was incredible.

All I was trying to say is that sometimes the words will never fit the picture because the picture is that intense, that vivid, or that vague.

A piece like this might be read entirely differently, depending on a person's experience, interests or awareness of sexual tension and release.

I'm sure the lady who got up to get a drink in the middle of a captivating, erect, glistening, naked handstand pose at the (literal) climax of the show probably has a whole other standpoint on this piece of art. You know?

This entire addendum, of course, calls into question what exactly the role of a performance arts writer is even supposed to be. [Please, please comment about this! It obviously keeps me up at night!]

Interpretation? Critique? Description? And what IF we read it wrong?

Either way, I kind of like it when pieces of art challenge any so-called experts speechless. It's a very good sign. >

A priori, j’avais hâte de voir un show musicalo-vélocipèdaire. Vraiment. Mais pour tout vous dire, une fois rendue, j’avais plutôt hâte que ça finisse. Ouch, c’est dur d’écrire ça, parce que je sais que le show de Evelyn Parry de jeudi soir à la Sala Rosa a beaucoup plu à la majorité, anglophone, qui remplissait la salle et qu’il était très bien fait et rendu… Alors respect à l’artiste qui a su rejoindre son public. Moi, j’en n’étais pas.

Qu’est-ce à dire. Ben j’aurais voulu me faire bousculer, me faire inspirer, mais plutôt, j’ai eu l’impression de me faire servir un bouillon bien cuit et pré-formaté par et pour une classe-moyenne-blanche-anglo-canadienne-bien-pensante-progressiste-déconnectée-gentille-occidentalo-centriste-féministe-égalitariste-du-bout-des-lèvres-voir-obtu. J’ai trouvé le tout fade, bien que je donne aux artiste que leur show était hyper rodé, tight de chez tight, pro quoi. Je donne aussi la magique créativité dans l’utilisation du vélo comme instrument de musique et des accessoires. Et bon, Evelyn Parry sait écrire et sait ce qu’elle fait. Mais c’est plutôt sur le contenue que ça achoppe…

//

Le propos, tournant autour du vélo et de son rôle dans l’émancipation des femmes au XIXe et XXe siècle m’a royalement saoulé. Quand Evelyn Parry aborde la question de l’utilisation de la bicyclette comme outil de libération et d’autonomisation des femmes, elle parle de quelles femmes en fait? Tout son spectacle était centré sur les femmes blanches, occidentales, de la classe bourgeoise et pire, omettait de mentionner ce fait et de situer son propos dans une perspective de classes sociales et de classes de race, outre la perspective des classes de sexe. Intersectionalité quelqu’une?

À l’image de l’auditoire d’une blancheur éblouissante, elle nous a montré de belles photos d’archives toutes présentant des femmes blanches, bien mises. Elle n’a jamais montré d’image de femme non-blanche à vélo, alors que les pionnières à bicyclettes étaient présentées comme une grande source d’inspiration pour nous, « femmes » contemporaines. On n’a jamais fait allusion à qui pouvait se payer un vélo, avait le temps d’en faire et avait accès aux loisirs à la fin du XIXe? Certainement pas les classes ouvrières, certainement pas les esclaves ou les récemment affranchies, certainement pas les peuples autochtones qui avaient leurs propres moyens de transport… certainement pas la majorité d’entre-nous, ici comme ailleurs. Le vélo était une commodité de luxe.

Elle en rajoute une grosse couche bien épaisse en présentant le vélo comme un moyen de transport non-polluant, pur, extrait de l’économie capitaliste qui s’est bâtie et se maintient sur l’exploitation. Le vélo est cet objet éthéré qui nous procure plaisir et liberté. Point. On ne questionne pas d’où proviennent les matériaux pour les construire, ni qui les construit, ni où, ni dans quelles conditions, ni qui a accès, encore aujourd’hui, à un vélo et au temps de l’utiliser. Bref, une idéalisation qui m’horripile de l’utilisation du vélo comme instrument de changement social. Ça va l’individualisation! Ça va l’occidentalo-centrisme!

//

Quand on sait que la plupart des vélos sont présentement fait d’aluminium et que Rio-Tinto Alcan, une compagnie bien de chez nous, déplace des populations entières gun sur la tempe en embauchant des paramilitaires locaux payés au prix fort dollars US, pour accéder au minerai de base composant le précieux métal;
Quand on sait que la plupart des vélos sont maintenant construits dans des usines de l’Asie de l’est, à Taiwan ou en Chine, dans des conditions sous-humaines au profit des compagnies qui majoritairement se fouttent complètement des conditions de vie et de travail des employées dans leur usine “délocalisée”;
Quand on sait qu’il y a une surenchère à l’innovation (!), à l’invention de gadgets hyper-technologiques, à le pression à l’achat du nouveau modèle, tout carbone, ou même one speed en acier, ou bref… Une incitation à la consommation alimentée à grande eau par l’industrie du vélocipède;
Quand on sait que l’extraction de la bauxite, minerai principal qui compose l’aluminium, est hyper polluante et toxique, détruisant des écosystèmes, des communautés, polluant cours d’eau et nappes phréatiques, et que la production de l’aluminium exige des quantités faramineuses d’électricité souvent données ou vendues à rabais par les états producteurs (entendre, Québec donne son électricité à Alcan)…

On ne peut plus voir le vélo simplement comme vecteur de l’autonomie des femmes, fournisseur de joie infinie et de vent dans les cheveux.

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Soyons claires, je suis biko-phile. J’ai passé mon enfance à vélo, mon papa n’ayant pas de voiture. Tout se faisait à vélo, et je reconnais ce sentiment de liberté à ne faire qu’un avec cette machine à deux roue que nous propulsons avec notre propre énergie. Oui, c’est magnifique et ça me remplit de bonheur. Ça, Evelyn Parry l’a dit. Mais sans faire de son show un discours politique, il reste que l’occultation de toutes ces autres réalités, souffrances et invisibilisation entourant le vélo et son utilisation m’ont profondément déplu.

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(*Wink* Ça vous apprendra à demander à une militante féministe radicale de bloguer!)

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Sur ce, j’vous laisse parce que je me lance dans une autre aventure edgyenne… « In Succube » ce soir (samedi, 24 mars). J’ai super hâte…

Et je vous concocte un blog beaucoup plus intéressant que celui-ci sur le show d’hier soir, “Je baise les yeux” de Gaëlle Bourges et cie. Que de contenu. Que de réflexions… à suivre.

Barb

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Allez, dites-moi donc ce que vous pensez de tout ça dans la section ici bas!)

A performance by Gaëlle Bourges rounded out by Marianne Chargois, Gaspard Delanoë and Alice Roland, the piece breaks down the terms of the striptease as quite intellectually fundamental. There’s a style, actually, that more-or-less consists of a three part formula: First is the dance—the stage presence and assertion of individual mojo. Second is the disrobe. Finally, the masturbation sequences.

The artistic direction is entirely up to the peeler herself, however, and will sometimes change depending on the audience (because getting kinky naked to industrial music isn’t necessarily everyone’s style). Qualifications and backgrounds of each stripper is different, as are her most regular clients.

Oh, and that’s right: the spectators are always referred to as ‘clients.’ Nothing more, nothing less.

And so, the politesse and nuance of a sex world that permeates our culture—yet which we scarcely discuss in such socio-intellectual, panel-discussion-with-stripper ways—takes form.

What is the erotic? What is the difference between a strip tease and a peep show? Can you talk about costs? Who, exactly, are the clients that keep this industry going? How has your perception of men changed after you started stripping? Do you take it all off?

These are some of the many queries the host ask the women, who sit at the conference room table in various degrees of undress and performance.

But what makes Je Baise Les Yeux so engaging is both the autonomy and intellect of the women during their interview—coupled, of course, with their absolute corporeal prowess and impressive gyration/contortion control. Through show and tell, the three women manage to break through some of the held-fast ideas we continue to have about the work of strippers.

And peel upon peel, prose upon prose, a candid portrait of an under-appreciated artisan emerges.

For all of its focus on the explanation, Je Baise Les Yeux stays stimulating by using actual stripteases to punctuate the dialogue and discourse—where we are privy to yoga-esque body contortion moves that so captivated the audience, all you could truly hear in the huge room was the sliding, flexible limbs along wooden floors.

Arching her feet into a pair of impossibly tall, platform, black faux leather high heels and wrapping a band of pearls around her neck, she repeats the body mastery and its transfixed beauty for the second time. Cue that industrial music and suddenly the yoga routine takes on a raunchier edge. A hanging pearl slips between her lips, she adds a few slow gyrations to flexibility—complete with the classic O-face—and there she secures strip science step number one: mojo.

What clients want and what clients pay for, the women explain through striptease number two, harks back to the repetition of motions. In a three-part pantsuit, hat and vest, a dancer gracefully disrobes (step one and two) before explicitly demonstrating the masturbation technique (number three).

A circular, single finger on the clit, followed by a moan. Light anal penetration with the same finger, followed by another moan. These are the sequences of stripper-stimulated sex. We also learn that when deviating from the standard, whatever the move, there are some fundamentals to a good show: conceal, reveal. Flash, then cover. Legs opened, legs closed. Sleaze, then tease.

The choreography of a climax is a science, really.

Though the question of “is this feminist” is the one that left with the audience near the final Q&A period (texted in by the audience during the whole shebang), one thing is certain: globally, great numbers of men are spending hundreds and hundreds of hours, evenings and dollars at the peelers and this is a profession that isn’t going anywhere.

Consummation of pornography, of the fetish, of women as a sexually stimulated and complete object of fantasy—along with its inherent jealously, excitement and insatiable urges that go with it—have convinced the three with a laugh that dirty detox might not be such a bad idea for the addicted, but it pays the bills.

And while some might say it’s just as terrible to spend your money on sex and striptease, others argue something like Disneyland or an egregiously expensive piece of contemporary art is just as morally bankrupt.

The beauty is in the business of the beholden.

Watch the teaser for Je Baise Les Yeux By Gaelle Bourges HERE!

And consider: If you could ask a stripper anything, what would it be?

If you enjoyed tonight’s performance or want the chance to take in another artistic exploration of the performativity and politics inherent in stripping and sex work, get your tickets to Les Demimondes — The Scandelles on March 31 and April 1 at Studio 303 before they sell out!

How we are able to navigate our urban streets and public space is so very political.

This conventional wisdom was especially apparent today — le mars 22 — where Quebec saw 200,000+ students, union members, professors, politicians, parents, children and concerned citizens taking to the streets to demand a democratic dialogue around the issue of accessible education.

And after meandering through a sea of peaceful, spirited, hopeful red squares fastened with pride to all kinds of people engaging with this issue today, it was fitting to end up at Montreal’s most famous red room—La Sala Rossa—to take in Spin, a bike-opera by Evalyn Parry featuring percussionist Brad Hart.

One of Edgy’s headlining bills, this performance piece/history lesson/personal narrative hybrid involves an artistic analysis of the bicycle as a muse, music, a means of transportation and an agent of social change that connects liberty and mobility.

Spin uses the music of a physical bicycle—mounted and played with bow strokes, strumming spokes, percussion on the pedal, bells and bars—looped in a way that accentuates “two-wheeled words” and meandering plot lines. For her part, Parry rides fluidly through the many eras and characters, commanding the room with passages and guitar rifs that are both sweet and soulful, folk- and grunge-inspired.

The storyline sets off with an introduction to turn of the century suffragists who loved and lived for the ‘steed that need no feed.”

We hear of epic Women’s Temperance Union leader Francis Willard, who penned a how-to-ride guide at the tender age of 53 when she learned that “she who succeeds in gaining mastery of her bicycle takes mastery of her life.” Parry also plays globetrotting and self-promoting Annie Londonderry, a 23-year-old ad woman who left her husband with their three kids to be the first woman to ride around the world on two wheels.

By introducing rabble rousers partial to the more radical aspects of their bicycle, Parry cycles us back to when transportation and emancipation were directly linked. She also manages to historically situate a Industrial era context where standard mass production and “progress” increasingly gave women more freedom of [consumer] choice and [purchasing] power.

How much of a historical hangover you see today is up to you.

Spin reminds us that the whip transformed an understanding of life and social order more deeply than many could conceive at the time, with women literally jumping on the chance to devour physical space and forward motion, refusing the social conventions and attitudes of the era:

By “going out on a limb,” foregoing the petticoat and showing off their physical and political legs, for example, women challenged aesthetic conventions of what they ‘should’ wear and do at the time and in public. Pants happened.

Doctors of the day also warned that enjoying the so-called sterility machine too much might ‘ride the fertility right out of your uterus’—because god forbid you have an orgasm. This particular scare tactic, not surprisingly, didn’t work either.

But curiously, one old adage from the old-school lady rulebook is something we continue to hear 100 years later; a warning meant for those in total control of their own ride:

Freedom to move is dangerous because you are literally taking your life into your own hands …as if that were a bad thing.

At this particular philosophical part of the production, however, the story breaks, moving its way into a personal narrative that involves the notorious Toronto-based bicycle klepto Igor Kenk, a theft, an accident and a breakup.

“If you have ever loved a bicycle, you know the heartbreak of having it stolen,” Parry sings of her missing steed, her memories, her mobility. “It was not just a bike. It was my history,”

But besides this personal passage, the brilliance of Spin really is that the lessons here are applicable to many things currently in motion. Emancipation, occupation, the politicizing of space and mobilizing on your own terms (in your own time) are things about the bicycle that are still essential today.

Perhaps contemporary similarities are part of the many political patterns that are cyclical, Parry hints as the wheels turn.

It is the past that drives us forward, after all.

- – - Watch Evalyn Parry’s SPIN Trailer on YouTube

Some considerations / questions:

1) Ever had a bike stolen? Were you heartbroken? How true is it for you that your whip is your history? Tell me a story.

2) What continue to be the biggest challenges facing urban cyclists?

3) How “feminist” is cycling today?

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Thanks for reading! I’ll be back with another blog post tomorrow on JE BAISE LES YEUX! A sexy, political strip tease. MARCH 23, 20h, La Sala Rossa (4848 St. Laurent)