The Body Marked

Concept and Choreography: Deborah Hazler
Duration: 20 minutes
Sound: Deborah Hazler
Performance and Choreography: Sarah Holcman, HeJin Jang, Lyndsey Karr, Nora Stephens
Premiere: American Dance Festival, USA, July 11, 2008

The Body Marked deals with the themes of pornography and sexual violence of women. The purpose is to investigate the aftermath of violence with out representing the violence itself.
Women are very likely to come into situations of sexual abuse, whether in physical or verbal form. The aftermaths of this abuse, the marking it leaves on the body is at the heart of the piece.

What happens to the body through outside forces of care or violence? Through shifts of abstraction and subversion a state of resistance and complacency is created.
The quartet of women demonstrates how the emotional landscape of feeling violated and insecure pushes and pulls their bodies into physical action. At the same time that the women struggle against their objectification they also enforce it, provoking the audience to focus on their bodies, slathered in lotion, while also exaggerating the images of wet dreams.