I’ve been listening to about Meg Foley’s “queer parenting” piece for over a 12 months now. The Velocity manufacturing workshopped in Seattle final summer time, and this weekend Blood Baby was lastly born. Of course it’s not only a “queer parenting” piece, however a “quadriptych exploring the intersectional experiences of gender performance, queerness, parenthood, sexuality, and belonging.” The parenting facet, nevertheless, stands out as being a much less widespread subject for efficiency, and likewise bears extra weight on this assessment, particularly as a result of I made a decision to deliver my 3-year-old with me to the present.
Photo by Allina Yang
Carpet Womb was one in all 5 occasions below the Blood Baby umbrella, which additionally included different performances, a contact library, video and sound installations, and a “queer parenting convening.” Several of the occasions happened in Volunteer Park, together with Carpet Womb, which clearly derives its title from the unfastened enclosure housing the efficiency. Gray mesh and twisting clouds of iridescent plastic encompass a nest of sentimental shag rugs and fluffy off-white pillows. Dancers are already in movement as we enter, suspended as flies trapped in amber, pushing in opposition to invisible resistance. In distinction my little one slides round on his stomach, having fun with the tactile nature of the comfortable flooring, then leaping up and down yelling “3, 2, 1 blastoff,” earlier than settling within the lap of a good friend who simply occurs to be on the present.
Two dancers close to us are gripped in a twisting embrace on the bottom. Clasping and reaching, legs and arms snaking round to grip ever tighter, toes curling, the picture may very well be an virtually literal depiction of lovemaking. But it is also the form of extremely concerned intimacy of the father or mother/little one relationship—the intertwined nature of self that’s when one individual begins inside one other.
Photo by Allina Yang
This is the primary of many instances the place pictures reference each sexuality and that practicalities of kid rearing. Not is a method that’s creepy, after all, however in a method that displays a organic actuality. When dancers open their mouths broad, tongues lolling, it’s each sexual and it’s the child’s mouth looking for the nipple. Later, a pile of dancers emerge right into a momentary scene of spreading legs and reaching below and over. It may very well be an orgy or it may very well be the supply room, docs and attendants aiding the delivery. Foley acknowledges and shows the holistic nature of our our bodies—replica and the reproductive act aren’t separate processes.
Photo by Allina Yang
The rhythm of the present appears to alternate between dancers bopping to disco-tinged beats and sluggish transferring durational moments (Labor contractions anybody? Or possibly I’m taking this metaphor a bit too far…) At one level the dancers go away the enclosure, twisting themselves in an extended strip of the grey mesh till every is encased in their very own linked cocoon. Fans of The Very Hungry Caterpillar can guess what occurs subsequent, and because the dancers emerge they don flowing clothes of brightly coloured organza, returning to the tent reworked.
It is right here that there’s admittedly some gaps in my capability to assessment the present. A 3 12 months outdated is just too wild to be contained by any womb, after all, and we should stealth-roll below the sting of the enclosure to choose up leaves and hit issues with sticks and loudly learn the letters off the sewer grate. From a distance I can see the dancers pile on one another, forming sedimentary layers that shift and ooze over time.
My view of Carpet Womb for some time through the present. Photo by yours actually.
We return for the ultimate part, through which the dancers line the rugs as much as make a catwalk stretching out of the “womb” and into the park. They strut and flaunt and current queer embodied pleasure, every in their very own method. They are messy, assured, alive, collectively. I’m left questioning after I’ll get to that have of parenting, or of queerness for that matter. Carpet Womb appears to be saying that the method is sluggish—geologic, and that the work is integration. The transformation is knowing how issues aren’t separate, however overlapping.
A dance assessment is at all times describing the intersection of your personal life and a efficiency, however when wrangling a toddler, your expertise is barely much less what the efficiency is giving and extra your personal enterprise. Beyond the imagery, my expertise inside Carpet Womb mirrored my life as a father or mother. I used to be extremely distracted and I missed lots. I used to be grateful for my good friend who engaged him so I may have a second to expertise artwork. Grateful he may expertise artwork. I loved the outside and rolling round on the bottom. I acquired kicked within the face.
Afterwords I requested my son what he thought. He didn’t just like the components “when they were sleeping,” which tracks, as a result of he’s philosophically against sleeping of all types. His favourite half? “When they turned into butterflies.”
Blood Baby by Meg Foley (Philadelphia) ran September 1-4, 2023 included occasions Carpet Womb, Communion, Touch Library, Queer Parenting Convening, and Primordial, which was a video/sound set up by visible artist (and Foley’s co-parent) Carmichael Jones. Casts included dancers from throughout the nation, together with a number of based mostly in Seattle. For extra data, go to https://velocitydancecenter.org/events/blood-baby/ and http://www.megfoley.org/.