March 19, 2021
Megan Bridge and Katherine Desimine on the Divine Feminine
It’s been awhile since we posted a Food for Thought Friday, but Megan and Katherine really felt like sitting down this week to chat about our event TOMORROW (3/20) with Forbidden Fruit- Equinox: A celebration of the Divine Feminine. Specifically, Katherine was curious about how Megan connects to the theme of the event, the divine feminine, in her work as a dancer and choreographer. We hope you enjoy this short chat that weaves femininity and the divine feminine in with the performance/audience relationship, the Male Gaze, burlesque performance modes, the body as a sacred site…
To explore other episodes, click here.
Transcript:
[About 10 seconds of intro music (Hildegard von Bingen- Canticles Of Ecstasy, Quia Ergo Femina Mortem Instruxit).]
Katherine: I guess I'm just curious about how the theme of the upcoming event, Equinox: A celebration of the Divine Feminine, relates to you specifically… specifically in your work as a dancer and/or choreographer... Or also, other artists that you've seen be in conversation with... with the idea of femininity or the divine feminine, that have been interesting to you.
Megan: Well... where to begin... For sure the concept of the divine feminine really shifted for me when I was dancing burlesque... [for] a very short amount of time in my career. But in the year 2006 I was a member of The Peek-a-Boo Revue, and it was a huge turning point for me as an artist because... doing burlesque allowed me to connect to a much more playful way of creating, and a much more playful and direct way of engaging with the audience, and... you know contrary to… maybe there's certain people who believe that burlesque or striptease is objectifying to women or exploitative... To me, I really connected to the way that burlesque and striptease is empowering for women... and that there's this concept... in theory we talk about the male gaze and how in Burlesque there is a very direct confrontation with that style of looking, and the way that the performer looks back sort of invites... invites that, maybe, objectification but in a positive way and in a very empowering way... And then more recently in my work... very recently, especially with our current project The Alt.terre, I've been thinking more about ritual and sacred spaces... And so for me, the body, the physical body itself, whether feminine masculine it doesn't matter, just the concept of the biological body feels like a sacred site…
When I was in high school we had these sex-ed classes and the teacher would always say, like- “Your body is your temple,” and a lot stuff… [laughs] a lot of stuff that I look back on now with suspicion because I think that at that point and the way that formulation was being used, was a very sex negative message... but I'm really... you know I feel like I'm sort of in this long arc going back to 2006 and doing burlesque dance, to like now and working on The Alt.terre, which is about you know, sacred spaces, and... we haven't used the word divine in that creative practice but for sure it's related to ritual and reverence… So these sort of longer arcs and cycles are connecting for me, that engage ideas around ritual and femininity and the body being a site to explore those concepts together and how they might weave together.
Katherine: Yeah. It’s interesting… ‘cause you're talking about how you engaged with the audience as a burlesque dancer or doing strip tease… and it feels like that is also... like that connects to me for stuff that you do in your work now, in your, you know what you might say is more like experimental or like postmodern. So I'm curious... do you feel like burlesque was the thing that turned you on to being like- “Oh, I'm going to explore my interaction with the audience,” and then also the eyes and the face, there's such an emphasis on that in your choreography... Or was that something that you were already interested in before you started doing burlesque and then... it carried through or?...
Megan: That's such an interesting question and I actually have to admit I don't think I've really thought deeply about that lineage, but now that you ask... I mean I remember as a very young dancer dancing for GroupMotion and getting feedback from audience members specifically about my eyes, and how the audience felt like I was doing something in particular with my eyes that... One audience member in particular I remember saying that my eyes were shooting out into the audience, or something… [Both laugh.] And recently Sheila's Zagar reminded me of that because last year, well before the lockdown, she and I did a little bit of work together in the studio and she was specifically interested in the way I was working with my gaze, and she reminded me of that, she was like- “I remember you all that way back in GroupMotion days early 2000’s,” and noticing that I was doing something specifically with the vision... So then fast forward to 2006 and burlesque and... giving myself permission to have that more playful eye contact. With GroupMotion it was very old school modern, really almost like staring out into the audience and piercing the audience with my gaze, but then with burlesque it was much softer and more direct and more playful. And then... like I think I really learned a lot from Danielle Currica, Sophie Sucree... Just watching her do burlesque, like she has an amazing connection with the audience through her eyes and the way that she looks and invites look... So I think that that is something that I've always been interested in, and then burlesque sort of freed things up for me a bit in that area. And then after that, like working with Deborah Hay and you know other more postmodern [artists], helped me kind of, ground it more consciously in my more experimental practice.
[About 15 seconds of outro music, same music as the intro. (Hildegard von Bingen- Canticles Of Ecstasy, Quia Ergo Femina Mortem Instruxit).]