Skirting the Issue travels to Triskelion Arts

Katherine Kiefer Stark and I will be traveling to Brooklyn to perform Skirting the Issue at the Collaborations in Dance Festival presented at Triskelion Arts (118 North 11th Street, 3rd Floor, Brooklyn, NY 11211) on Thursday, October 13th and Sunday October 18th at 8 pm.

Skirting the Issue is a duet work inspired by Jude Robison’s artist book The Woman Who Loved Worms. The book contains a poem of the same name, by Collette Inez, about a woman who refuses to marry a powerful Lord and “disdains butterflies,” a symbol of her rejection of femininity. Robison’s book contains beautiful letterpress and printed imagery on handmade Tibetan paper and is actually quite feminine in nature. The choreography explores ways in which we “skirt the issue” of our own femininity, picking and choosing what aspects to accept and reject, often focusing more energy on rejecting feminine expectations than on simply being ourselves. We women often put on our fresh coat of lipstick and then claim to not care how we look! The book and the dance, express the complexity of these issues.