SARA HOLWERDA

SARA HOLWERDA
(accompanied by Johanna Wiesbrock on viola)
SAT 06.01 @ 7PM
dfb gallery
“CHAIR DANCE (ADAGIO)”
www.saramholwerda.com
RP13 photos by Arjuna Capulong
more on flickr

Sara Holwerda (US) grew up in an unincorporated small town in central Michigan named after the plant that killed Socrates. She went on to be fully educated in the state, with a BFA from University of Michigan and an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art. She has performed internationally – if you count Canada – and has participated in performances, exhibitions and screenings across the continental United States. She lives and works in Chicago. After performing in Rapid Pulse, she is taking her first truly international flight, Amsterdam bound.

“CHAIR DANCE (ADAGIO)”

As a conventional element of cabaret, burlesque and striptease performances, the chair signifies the body of the male spectator. A classic chair dance places the female performer in a sexualized relationship with the chair, and through her movements, she models a set of cultural expectations about the female body and how it should function in heterosexual relationships. Most saliently, the woman is performing for the pleasure of the man, moving in ways that are objectifying her and making her physically vulnerable.

My work challenges these expectations by complicating the relationship between the female performer and her prop. Using movement, I expand the performative, narrative and symbolic capacity of the female body. The choreography, motivated by my personal history with violence and spectacle, includes movements from stage combat, self-defense, YouTube instructional videos, and turn-of-the century Parisian apache (a dramatized street fight between her and two or more men).