Concept, Choreography: Christine Borch // Performance: Moss Beynon Juckes
Yurt building: Lars Schmidt // Platform design: Yoraco González // Midwife support: Anima Schmitz-Salue
Supported by Uferstudios Berlin.
Thanks to Javier Cura, Barbara Friedrich, Calamankey Farm and all the friends who provided their mood and muscles in setting up the yurt: Ludwig, Patrick, Jens Dube, Peter Wolfersberger, Surjan, Free, Felix Ruckert, Martin Schmidt, Dirk Bell and the technical team of Uferstudios.
This performance is presented as part of a research into notions of becoming, in this case becoming with child. During pregnancy the body and spirit of a woman is radically undergoing transformations within in a short time. Of course this is the case for everyone, as no body is stable, but it is unique that the change is physically manifested in a way that it is so easily perceived externally, despite that still most changes are happening internally. The reason behind this project comes from a deeper curiosity and a conscious search for bodies in change in order to establish a sense of comfort and trust in the instability. To generate and recover embodied knowledge of the self, but simultaneously to uncover a potential collective memory of birth, of becoming and to suggest the process of pregnancy as a collective human experience.
The work explores questions such as how the body prepares itself for the experience of giving birth, experiences of pain with the possibility of transforming the sensations into pleasure as well as how pregnancy shifts the perception of self. What does it mean to share a body with another, to be a body in-between, to be two, between yourself and another? What body arrives when the present body continually transition into becoming another. To process the involutions of becoming and the multiple answers as they arrive.
This piece is the third work in a series with the title Body in Progress; the first was performed in England 2011 by Joni E. Brown when she was in the 7th month of pregnancy. The second was performed at Tanz im August 2011 by Christine Borch embodying the experience she had perceived in Joni while creating the first work. This time it will be performed by Moss Beynon Juckes in the 6th month of her pregnancy and will be of a site-specific nature being developed and performed inside a yurt constructed in the courtyard of Uferstudios. For the duration of the production the yurt will simultaneously be the home of Christine.
Drawing from knowledge of midwifery as well as intuitive experiential bodywork, the performance intends to explore the creative potential, wisdom and mysteries surrounding pregnancy. Call it an experiment of embodied birth preparation. Call it choreography.
mossbeynonjuckes.com 