antithesis is inherently a community and site-specific based-work, with performers culled from both the postmodern and erotic dance world--strippers, pole dancers, burlesque, etc. Through an investigative and creative process involving the combined cast, antithesis asks: Where are the spaces and opportunities to explore female eroticism that are not designed for consumption or subject to policing? If there are other “Uses of the Erotic”, where is that practiced, when and how is it cultivated? What if sexual expression, defiance, survival, joy, pleasure, creativity, subjectivity, and agency can be culled from that exploration? How can that be embodied versus theorized?

antithesis can be staged in multiple venues, from an art gallery, to the strip club, the concert stage or an alternate performance space. The research of antithesis will be found in how the cast--a mix of performers with postmodern and erotic dance experience--tests the performance of unencumbered eroticism and the audacity of female sexuality in the context of different environments. I am particularly interested in placing the work in a strip club, because it moves the practice of antithesis beyond the safe container of “art” and the dance studio. Participants--audience and cast members alike-- are asked to embody the contradictions of the cultures and the space; to witness the precarious practice of holding on to the “yes within” one’s self, amidst the gazes of the audience present--performers, art gallery attendees, postmodern dance goers, strip club patrons, academic scholars, etc.

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