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| Last rehearsal, Alex took this picture |
On Monday we did a test run in front of three friends and the response was very positive. Alex videoed the session and we watched it yesterday. This is the first time I have seen myself dancing and it is quite hard to articulate what this means to me.
The fact that I can watch myself dancing strikes me as significant; I felt some panic rising, but I was able to talk myself down and I understand my ability to do this this as a product of years of work. Seeing myself was useful in terms of thinking of what I need to do in the piece, where the movement might need to go. Kay and I noticed that the feelings we had whilst dancing and watching were pretty aligned – what we see is how we experience the dance – and this feels encouraging.
A big part of watching was seeing that I am really very fat! There are others who are fatter, but I have plenty of fat of my own. I like how other fat people look and I know that I look like them, but I don't have much of a sense of how I actually look, even though I don't shy away from photos or mirrors. It's bizarre that being really very fat should be a revelation at this stage in my life, but there it is. I think of my fatness in the video and in the dance as unassimilated. The dance is not pretty and my fatness is not contained, respectable, veiled, hinted at, flattered, cordoned off or made nice, it is undeniably there. I'm often plodding, huffing, red-faced, sagging, stiff, awkward. When I look at my fatness I also see class, gender, disability, age, marginalisation. I am presenting my unassimilated fat body for an audience to look at and have whatever response they're going to have and I will probably learn something from this. It's a different kind of selfie.
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| What is a dancer supposed to be like? |
Perhaps I'm protected in spite of being very fat because of the work that I and many others have done. We have started the difficult task of making a world for ourselves. That people don't run away when they see me could be down to their indifference about fat, maybe it doesn’t really matter, or people can cope with more than I think. My whiteness and education protects me from quite a bit of crap. Perhaps most people keep their fatphobic thoughts to themselves and it's only occasionally that it crosses over into action. Sadly/luckily I'm not a mind reader.
As I watched myself dancing on a screen I wasn't sure what I might do with this 'self-seeing'. We had a break afterwards and Kay and I went to the supermarket to get a snack. I tried to embody that monstrously fat self that I saw onscreen as an experiment in the supermarket, to see what people would do around me, and how I might feel. Nobody screamed or ran, nobody noticed, but inside I felt big, powerful, able to walk without feeling that I should be less of me. It was funny to notice this feeling. I was a monster buying a box of falafel. I thought about all the other monsters in the world, doing their thing.
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| Rehearsing at Rich Mix |
All this makes me feel even more certain that what we are doing with SWAGGA, and the Project O Goes Large double bill with Benz Punany, is very powerful. It is sophisticated and beautiful, it presents many intersections, multiple layers, with space for lots of different interpretations. The four of us are very daring in working with our differences and we have been so richly rewarded because of these leaps and because we are already strong in who we are. This convinces me even more that mixing things up is the way to go and that, where identity is concerned, I have little desire to pursue cultural work or activism that is rooted in purity, safe space, monoculture or fear.
Fat and dancing and life and everything
SWAGGA has begun
SWAGGA: fat dancing, bodies, watching and shame
SWAGGA opening night happened!
