BODY.WORK

BODY.WORK is a meditation on reverence, labor, and contradiction. Rooted in collaboration with pole dancers working across nightlife spaces, the piece translates live movement into shifting abstractions, reducing the body while preserving its force. The labor of dancers exists across every boundary in the United States regardless of religious, political, and economic standing, yet it remains persistently stigmatized and culturally disavowed. body.work is an act of veneration

Sources: Audio excerpts from Conceptions of Divine Love by Saint Teresa of Avila (read by Ann Boulais) and Hymn of the Cherubim by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. Archival footage courtesy of the Perlmutter Archive's public domain home movie collection.