CANCELLED: SCHMOPE at Vancouver Fringe Nov 26-Dec 5 2020

CANCELLED DUE TO COVID

ANNOUNCEMENT

Tasha Diamant performs 

Schmope at the Vancouver Fringe

Nov 26-Dec 5 2020

Ticket info https://www.vancouverfringe.com/ticket-info/ 

Program description: Phenomenal woman. Superhero. Schmancer survivor. Brilliant performance artist/improviser/tragicomedian Tasha Diamant uses her naked body+miraculous self to create offerings pushing back against an oppressive culture. Radical vulnerability as medicine. Montreal Fringe creativity award winner 2018.

Times and Place:

Performance Works

1218 Cartwright Street, Granville Island

Vancouver, BC

Thu 26th Nov 7:00-8:15 pm

Fri 27th Nov 9:15-10:30 pm

Sat 28th Nov 4:30-5:45 pm

Sun 29th Nov 7:00-8:15 pm

Thu 3rd Dec 9:15-10:30 pm

Sat 5th Dec 2:00-3:15 pm

"Your work is the most interesting and powerful and important work that I've seen at any Fringe."

–Charles Adrian, creator of Ms. Samantha Mann

"Our winner is a show that isn't comfortable in its contradictions and cares so deeply it just can't give a fuck! Fierce nonchalance and the full power of extreme vulnerability: it challenges everything we believe about theatre and undermines all hierarchies. It is the ultimate feminist act and the ultimate act of fringe."

— Geoff Agombar, Montreal Fringe juror

"You are a role model."

— audience member

"When confronted with work to which I've had a visceral reaction I need to go deep within to confront the part of me that’s mirrored. Although there are many solemn moments, the performance is surprisingly life-affirming, with moments of laughter... Profoundly moving and relevant."

— Janis La Couvée

"The definition of sincerity."

— audience member

Ticket info https://www.vancouverfringe.com/ticket-info/ 

Standing by the cement "Corona" pipes in Squamish, BC, 2019 (pre-Corona virus). Photo by Nicole Gurney.

"Plot" summary:

I start out sitting in the theatre as the audience comes in. Just regular lighting with perhaps a bit of stage lighting as well. I chat with people or not. When the show starts I say a brief intro and remind the audience that I will get naked. I get undressed and put on my Extinction Symbol "outfit," as I have done on the streets many times. I talk about whatever comes to mind, usually about the street activism/performances that I've done. Then eventually I take the Extinction Symbols off and I speak extemporaneously. I discuss: big emotions, extinction, capitalism, colonization, how this is the most destructive culture that has ever existed, fun stuff like that. I share my own challenges with being an adult and mother in this culture. Sometimes I am quiet. People are invited to contribute. No one is asked to do anything.

"Marketing" angles:

I am the first person in the world to stand on the streets naked holding the Extinction Symbol (as confirmed to me by the symbol's creator). The Extinction Symbol was created in 2011 by an anonymous British artist known as ESP. I had been doing monthly naked Vulnerability Vigils in Victoria, holding a sign with the word VULNERABLE (and other words). When I learned about the Extinction Symbol in 2014, I started to hold that. It is now, of course, an international symbol used by activists worldwide. 

I am a Stage 4 cancer survivor (I prefer to identify as a schmancer schmurvivor). I have lived more than 5 years since diagnosis. My doctor says I'm a miracle patient. My cancer is inseparable from who I am and have been as an artist. My ongoing performance art project is called the Human Body Project and, obviously, cancer is part of MY human body project. The connection between how our culture is destructive and brutal and how I feel in my emotions and body is something I've felt since I was a child but only really deeply explored after becoming a mother. I've felt very alone but, you know, what with the casual end of old growth trees, air that is unbreathable from other dying forests, SO MANY SCAPEGOATS and marginalized people, and the global pandemic... more people are finally connecting the SAD FUCKING dots.

If, for some reason, you read about me and think I must identify as libertarian, anti-masker, anti-vaxxer, conservative-leaning, credulous of anything Fox news or Rebel media would cover, or even a nudist, and that appeals to you... you're probably going to be disappointed.

I am also a visual artist and just finished painting a beautiful mural in downtown Victoria.

COVID 19:

For information about Vancouver Fringe's excellent Corona virus precautions here's a link. https://tickets.vancouverfringe.com/

Fifth Schmancerversary

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Fires+Cancerversary Action Sun Aug 26 3-4 pm Quadra near Pandora

Fire$, tree$. $orry, not $orry.

I hope everyone who is reading this can breathe.

August 26th will mark the third anniversary of being admitted to hospital with what turned out to be Stage 4 ladybits cancer (ovarian, fallopian, too difficult to be sure).

So I'm holding a...

Cancerversary+Fires Action
Sunday, August 26
3-4pm
Quadra St near Pandora, Victoria, BC

This action will entail a performance of what I'm dubbing an Atrocity Cheer.
I'll be in my version of cheerleader garb, complete with pompoms.
All are welcome.

Facebook event

I'm still breathing.

30% to 50% of those in my schmancer boat are still alive after five years. I do plan to continue to be in that number even though I feel quite sure I landed on an incorrect planet, or at least an incorrect time period on this one. Having landed here though, I've made some heart connections and whatnot so I've gotta do the time.

To recap, I've been holding the Monthly Actions / Acts of Disruption+Resistance / Vulnerability Vigils for more than six years, doing the performance artwork under the umbrella of the Human Body Project for more than 12, and, while cancer sucked, the intense emotional pain that I've come to identify with being on the wrong planet has been a longer and harder road since about age 12 on.

When I had the idea for the Human Body Project in 2004 (it took me two years to get the courage up to be naked), the main reason I felt compelled to do the work and chose the overarching theme of vulnerability was because everything I felt was important and URGENT was nowhere to be found in any accessible discourse I could enter into.

Lately, many of the conversations that were impossible to imagine people having are finally happening in a much more open way: the severe pain and cost of capitalism; non-binary distinctions; systemic corruption, violence, racism and misogyny; the ongoing effects of colonialism; ongoing colonialism; etc. Or at least that's how it looks to me in my self-curated social media feeds.

Dots are finally being connected. Compartments are being pried open. The dark layers are becoming visible.

So I've been confused. Should I still follow the impetus that has taken me this far? Like, do I still have my unpaid, embarrassing job?! Haha.

NON-TRANSCENDENT. It recently dawned on me that this word describes my work.

It helped me realize it is still an important artistic statement in the sense that it's SUPPOSED TO BE grounding and extreme in the grinding and excruciating here and now.

I do still have my cop-magnet, buzz-kill job!

Link to Saanich News story about last month's action:
https://www.saanichnews.com/news/naked-roadside-protest-stopped-outside-camp-namegans/

Support? Hey, I recently won an award for my show Naked Ugly Dancing at the Montreal Fringe but the money from my award and ticket sales did not even cover my plane fare. If you'd like to support this work by, say, buying me the equivalent of a latte or two once a month or even once please consider checking out my Patreon site.
https://www.patreon.com/humanbodyproject

Amalgam: Marathon of Schmope idea; YouTube censorship; Esq HS lockdown; etc

I post a lot on Facebook and forget to post here.

So the following are some more important posts from the recent past.

Today:

Always with the brain and the heart and the layers and the nuance and the overwhelm and the complexity and the paradox and the heaviness and thank Dog I no longer menstruate.

April 30, 2018:


It's April 30th and, although I'm still fucking sick of the endless fucking shit, I did not do a monthly action for April and it's not happening today. So sue me.


Instead, I post here a new idea I have been sitting with.


Marathon of Schmope


Marathon of Schmope is my version of being a schmancery person who runs across Canada. (An extension, if you will, of Terry Fox's Marathon of Hope.)


Except that I'm a mom and I ostensibly need to feed the younguns. And I'm on disability and can't afford a driver or even Steve Fonyo's used van.


So my plan is to just slowly rack up the miles by occasionally running/naked ugly dancing around my town of Victoria, BC. Probably mostly around the legislature (=obsolete colonial structure) and probably mostly naked (=undefended+vulnerable, not to mention old+fat while being female).


Why? For quite a while, I've had to live every day with the belief that we (or at least I) with awareness and privilege should be self-immolating like the Tibetan nuns and monks until the masses finally wake up.


But I'm a mother, not a nun (yet), so that's not an option either.


My schmancer is no doubt partly a self-immolation. And for the last 12 years, I've been doing forms of "self-immolation" by using my naked body to bypass my family/tribal (ie European/North American)/epigenetic defence responses and allow myself to be physically and emotionally vulnerable.


Also, I should say, even before I became a schmurvivor of Stage 4 schmancer, I was very touched and inspired by Terry Fox and Steve Fonyo. (See previous blog post So I Took the Kids to the Terry Fox Exhibit for more on Terry Fox and Steve Fonyo)


I call it Marathon of Schmope not to ridicule but to use language without hard labels. I don't feel hope but hopelessness isn't exactly correct.


I'm grateful that Cancer, Inc. (and many good people and good research) helped save my life but, no, I'm not raising money.


(In fact, I LOATHE with every single breath in my body that the sole response we continue to teach to our children in this day and age is to throw money at a GIANT COMPLICATED PROBLEM without having the ability or desire to teach complexity much less disruption or resistance.

This is activism and endurance. This is continuation of my work in the Human Body Project.

This is dealing with the trauma of living in a culture of BLIND BRUTALITY.

This is my feminism is my indigenism is my pain is my self is my body is my brain is my art. This is using my privilege.

This is my vulnerable body, my body that brought life into the world, providing ritual that is feeling that is revealing that is healing.


April 29, 2018

I think Michele Wolf is a brave woman. Here's a link to her speech at the White House Correspondents' dinner.
https://www.facebook.com/NowThisPolitics/videos/2031466310218182/UzpfSTgxNTA3MDYwMDoxMDE2MDUwOTcxODcyMDYwMQ/

April 23, 2018

Heard today: "I need to be treated with respect and so I'm unemployable."

Couldn't have said it better.

April 15, 2018

The post and the conversation. Interesting. I find parts of the conversation provide an excellent example of trying to express trauma and pain to people who aren't in touch with it. And aren't much in touch with empathy.



April 13, 2018

In 2018, someone took the time to report my YouTube video:

Hi HumanBodyProject,

As you may know, our Community Guidelines describe which content we allow – and don’t allow – on YouTube. Your video "My Own Little Desperate Pride Parade" was flagged for review. Upon review, we’ve determined that it violates our guidelines. We’ve removed it from YouTube and assigned a Community Guidelines strike, or temporary penalty, to your account.

Video content restrictions

If a video contains nudity, pornography, or other sexually provocative content, it's less likely to be allowed on YouTube. YouTube reviews content on a case by case basis and will make limited exceptions for appropriate educational, documentary, artistic, and scientific contexts. In such cases, we may apply an age restriction so that only viewers over a certain age can view the content. Learn more here.

The impact of strikes

This is the first strike applied to your account. We understand that users seldom intend to violate our policies. That’s why strikes don’t last forever – this strike will expire in three months. However, it’s important to remember that additional strikes could prevent you from posting content to YouTube or even lead to your account being terminated.

I appealed:

My nudity is a political statement and a piece of performance art, along the lines of the work of Marina Abramovic who also uses her naked body as a medium. There is absolutely NOTHING sexual or sexually explicit about my video. It is an expression of the vulnerability of my body and all our bodies in a desperate time. In the video itself you can see that the police who speak with me come to understand that my work is a valid form of expression in a country with freedom of expression laws. I have never been arrested and my work is accepted by many as important art. I have won a national research award for my arts-based practice and I am a former university instructor in the field of cultural studies. YouTube’s knee-jerk reaction to harmless bodies is inappropriate and, arguably, discrimination.

(I have not yet received a reply.)

March 29, 2018

Walking around Montreal is like walking around a huge (non-wankerish) contemporary art installation about what can happen when low property prices, diverse cultures, bad weather, Canadian-Quebecois policies (esp late 70s-early 80s Anglo exodus), two main languages, and a general je ne give a fuck pas all come together. I LOVE it. (Except the bad weather).

March 11, 2018

I did an impromptu Monthly Action in March.



March 7, 2018

Follow-up to my concerns about the lockdown at Esquimalt High School. Bottom line, many of my conclusions were mistaken:

Last week, I met with the police school liaison officer for Esquimalt High School (who had been part of the team deployed during the Esquimalt lockdown) along with his boss, an inspector.

Some background: After the lockdown at Esquimalt in November I wrote a piece sharing concerns about what I’d witnessed. I’d arrived at the school, moments after the lockdown started, to pick up my kid for an appointment. I ended up watching the whole thing, which took 2+ hours, from the outside.

Humbled, I have learned quite a lot since sharing on social media and speaking with these police officers.

I had found the casual attitude exhibited by the police officers outside the school comforting from the POV of a mom but it had made me wonder about the necessity for a lockdown with big weapons, especially given that the person they were looking for was a teenager armed with a knife who stole a backpack.

A friend who works as a security officer in Alberta told me that often, in such situations, officers may look like they’re joking or whatever but they are deadly serious. She also said it’s difficult to talk about these kinds of situations with people who don’t do this kind of work. (The armchair quarterback thing but with lives on the line.)

The officers I spoke to in Esquimalt agreed and also really allayed my concerns about the big guns. The weapon they use is far more accurate and far more stable than a smaller gun. They use it specifically because it’s far less likely to miss and far less likely to hit bystanders. They also said knife-weilders can be very dangerous, which is true, of course, and they have to take such a threat seriously.

Watching from the outside, the exercise had seemed over the top and uber-macho to me so I’m grateful a) for these two officers speaking to me with empathy and explaining openly and b) for the clarification that how I interpreted the situation was a lot of my own projection (I’m using those words; the officers kindly did not).

My last main concern had been that I witnessed some boys on the field talking excitedly about the cops’ guns. I found this the most disturbing... that boys, who were probably feeling vulnerable, would brush off those feelings to boastfully display their knowledge of the guns’ features and firepower, as if trying to make it all an entertainment.

I had asked if there could be some kind of discussion about the police’s use of big guns and gun culture. During all the debriefing that occurs, my hope is that it can include discussion that is focused on the officers’ feelings of realness and danger of either getting shot or having to shoot a human being. In those moments of dialled-up emotion for everyone, addressing the actual officers’ authentic POVs might be very useful in our world of first-person-shooter games, uber-violent movies, and an epidemic of mass gun murders at schools.

The officers said that my concerns made sense and were taken seriously. They said that they would take those concerns to a committee meeting addressing the Esquimalt lockdown where a discussion of improving lockdown responses would be taking place.


I’ll never have to respond to such a scary situation. I appreciated that these men took the time to talk to me. Even though I struggle with violence of all forms in our culture and feel that our justice system is profoundly UNjust, I feel appreciation for what my friend in Alberta, these men, and other individuals are required to do in the course of their jobs and, though I may detest the idea of people armed with heavy artillery entering my daughter’s school, I now comprehend the necessity of the police actions during the lockdown at Esquimalt.

February 24, 2018

Excellent piece. The Time I was Almost a School Shooter
http://www.davideverettfisher.com/the-time-i-was-almost-a-school-shooter/

January 30, 2018

Excellent piece. The Female Price of Male Pleasure
http://theweek.com/articles/749978/female-price-male-pleasure

January 25, 2018

I won't share the reply I got from Vic PD but here's my follow-up:

Thank you for the risks you take and the care you have. I do appreciate it.

What I understood and witnessed was that the police were heavily armed. The weapons were not pistols but big guns. I understand being armed but why such big guns? I assume automatic or semi-automatics? Is that the case? If so, why?

I believe "boys love guns" is a social construction, which definitely includes police culture, so I'm somewhat disturbed to hear this brushed off. I think it's something important to address with students after such an event in the future.

Talk about the weaponry and the reasons for using. Tell us about how they keep us safer than pistols. I honestly don't know and would like to understand why, because crazy big automatic guns don't seem like a good idea to me.

And be honest about what it's like. Is it scarier than a first-person-shooter game or a typical movie? Does it inform your understanding of these entertainments? I think these kinds of topics would be relevant, comforting from a transparency standpoint, and educational. Better than journals.

Thanks for conversing, Tasha

January 25, 2018

I have finally written (to the police, PAC, and educators) regarding the over-the-top November lockdown at my kid’s school.

“This is how accidental police shootings occur. I feel the police put those children in more danger than the robber did.”

To the Chief of Police et al:

My daughter is a student at Esquimalt High School.

On Monday, November 6, 2017, a student was robbed at knifepoint outside of the school and the school was placed in lockdown.

I happened to arrive moments after the lockdown started and waited about 1 1/2-2 hours until it ended because my daughter had an important doctor appointment.

It’s taken me a while to formulate my thoughts and I am now writing to express that I am very disappointed and horrified about what took place.

First, I could tell from my vantage point that the police were not super-concerned. The ones in the parking lot did not look stressed and were at ease. As a parent on the scene, I felt comforted.

However, as I waited, I walked around the field and heard three boys speaking with excitement about the armed officers (who had entered the school shortly before I got there). They were, no doubt, feeling at least a little vulnerable by the situation and the weaponry, but they spoke excitedly about the “cool” brands or models of the guns.

I was very distressed by their (societally ingrained) way of dealing with a potentially unsafe situation by showing off their knowledge of guns instead of heading straight home or consoling each other by discussing their fears.

But mostly, I wondered why, if the police outside the building looked so relaxed, the police inside the building were heavily armed?! Especially after learning afterwards that the robber had been armed with only a knife.

We also learned afterward that the lockdown was “precautionary.”

When the police came out at the end some of the men looked very pumped and excited.

It looked to me like the whole thing was some exercise in adrenaline.

I could be projecting.

In any case, I really question the use of such heavy artillery IN A SCHOOL to find a knife-bearing robber who no one really thought would be there. This is how accidental police shootings occur. I feel the police put those children in more danger than the robber did.

I also feel that the unnecessary escalation of violence that occurred is harmful to the psyches of everyone touched by that situation.

I appreciate police as first responders and people who have to put themselves in harm’s way. And I get the difficulty of deciding in the moment about potential threats. But I’d really like to hear a response regarding the thinking behind this, as well as thoughts from educators and other parents.


Sincerely, Tasha Diamant, mother.

6th Anniversary of Vulnerability Actions+New Video

I'm not the highest functioning person since ye olde Stage 4 Kanker wake-up call... but I do get out and about once a month to disturb the masses.

Here's my latest YouTube video of last month's street action. By chance, I caught a lot of audio of police (even more than the month before). I like to think that I provided some education.

Also, on New Year's Eve Day, December 31, 2017, I'll do a 6th Anniversary Monthly Action (aka Vulnerability Vigil)
3-4 pm
BC Legislature Grounds (Victoria) or nearby
Everyone welcome. Dressed or not.
Link to Facebook Event

For this piece of shamanic street performance, I plan to cover my naked body with "HELLO my name is" labels.

As most of you know, I started monthly Vulnerability Vigils on January 1, 2012. I've held at least one public vigil monthly, except when I was very ill. Vigils have evolved.

But I continue to use my naked body as a medium to share vulnerability and as a cultural/political statement.

Loneliness+futility, I've found, are part of the art.

#NUD in #yyj (Oct 14 2pm "Odeon Alley")

Naked Ugly Dancing

#NUD in #yyj

Saturday, October 14

2 pm

"Odeon Alley"

700 Block of Yates St

Victoria, BC

-- Part of Open Actions Monthly

Everyone welcome.

Photo by Miyoko Caubet, #NUD in #yyj September 2017

I will ugly dance naked.

Why? •Healing ritual. •Cultural antidote. •Humanization. •I am a human canary ("in a coal mine") and Stage 4 cancer survivor. As a longtime performance artist using my own naked, vulnerable body/self, I share and create space for vulnerability. •I am dancing the ugly out on behalf of myself and my dehumanizing, destructive culture. •The casual violence of our dominant culture is systemic, structural, and we learn to tolerate it pre-verbally. So, in my art (and life), I explore purposeful, visceral vulnerability. Facebook event link

So I Took the Kids to the Terry Fox Exhibit

I recently took the kids to the Terry Fox exhibit at the Royal BC Museum.  I cried. The Terry Fox story is incredibly touching and beautiful. What a shining example of humanity he was.

But I was also VERY irritated. I like to think Terry would be ticked off too. 

I cried for the reasons we are all moved by Terry Fox. The artifacts are inexplicably heartrending. A shirt. A prosthetic leg. His mother's calendar! The letters from kids!! He was so young, so beautiful, so brave, so real. And then he died. 

Our culture eats up that shit. That's the part I found so irritating. First of all, we like our heroes to be pretty, check. Preferably white, check. UNCOMPLICATED, check.

Terry was a nice middle-class kid, a jock, a Canadian "every-young-man." We learn he was sometimes crabby on the road. Take that Canadians! Our hero was sometimes crabby. 

It's telling that the promo video for the exhibit prominently features Wayne Gretzky--alive but with the nice (fake?) clean brand intact (if not fake, certainly unknowable and easily digested).

I'm totally guessing but I bet Terry would prefer to see a Steve Fonyo exhibit or a Terry Fox and Steve Fonyo exhibit. (I would.) 

Over and over, throughout the exhibit, we learn that Terry did not want to become *Terry Fox*. He was just a guy who knew he had work to do and was determined to do it. Selfless, sure, but he didn't want to be made into a big deal.

Now Steve Fonyo. There's a guy who's been through some shit! 

He didn't die! 

After he ran all the way across Canada on one leg, he struggled with addiction and committed petty crimes. I'm not saying he doesn't bear responsibility for his choices, but, wow, what a comment on fame and heroism. 

And projection. Steve was no Terry in the looks department. And a more damaged guy. He got nationally dissed for riding Terry's coattails. What? Only one person's allowed to run on one leg? 

Eventually his Order of Canada was rescinded. How petty and punitive can we get?

I can't believe I'm agreeing with a Toronto Sun opinion piece, but give the guy his Order of Canada back. Back in the day, he ran across Canada on one leg and raised $13 million dollars and his life has been shitty ever since.

Steve Fonyo, his accomplishments and subsequent struggles with fame and post-fame should have been an equal part of the Terry Fox exhibit. His enormously successful 1985 run was inspired by Terry. 

His complicated life, though plausibly quite different to how Terry would have lived his, would add more poignancy and authenticity to the unasked for divinity of *Terry Fox*. 

Terry, the young man, was 22 when he died. He didn't have a lot of time to get complicated. In some ways, that's the saddest loss.

I think we do Terry a huge disservice, making him this nice, clean, lovably crabby cancer poster boy. 

(I've learned that filmmaker Alan Zweig has made two recent documentaries about Fonyo: Hope (2017) and Hurt (2015). I need to see these movies.)

But I reserve most of my irritation for the outdated idea that money will cure cancer.

In Terry's day, Cancer Inc. was not the beast it is today. Yes, we need money for research. Yes, we need more research. 

But as a Stage 4 Ovarian Cancer Survivor, an incredibly sensitive human being, and former beaten-up Education Inc. disposable lackey (i.e. feminist contract or "adjunct" instructor in cultural studies-type classes in post-secondary institutions), I know I got cancer from trying to behave and fit in a culture that hates who I am.

This is a sick culture and no amount of scientific research will fix that without acknowledging the corruption and giant house of cards that is contemporary global capitalism, which contaminates EVERYTHING.

I LOATHE with every single breath in my body that the sole response we continue to teach to our children in this day and age is to throw money at a GIANT COMPLICATED PROBLEM without having the ability or desire to teach complexity much less disruption or resistance. 

Including Steve Fonyo in this exhibit would have been a step in that direction.

Naked Ugly Dancing at Victoria Fringe 2017

Naked Ugly Dancing

Dancing the ugly out at Victoria Fringe 2017.


I was supposed to be performing at the Victoria Fringe 2015 preview night two years ago when I was admitted to hospital with what turned out to be Stage 4 ovarian cancer.

With an enlarged rendering of my tumour in the background, for this year's fringe I'll be performing my latest work furthering key themes of vulnerability and embodiment: Naked Ugly Dancing. 

(Yes, I asked my doctor for photos. I would have buried my tumour but, instead, opted to contribute my innards to a research project.) 

I will be "ugly dancing." I.e., not necessarily dancing with the goal of being "ugly" but with a goal to dance the ugly out... On behalf of myself and others. On behalf of this damaged culture.

And, I'll be naked.

There will be spontaneous interaction with the audience. But gently, with no invasion of people's space.

I'm 55, overweight, not in great shape and depleted. So there will likely be some moments of collapse. Although, recently, I started ugly dancing (dressed) on the streets as a busker and am happy to report that I'm able to last an hour. :)

Why? 

As the creator of the Human Body Project and Vulnerability Vigils, for more than 10 years I've been using my naked, vulnerable body/self in performance and in public. I see it as a way to create exploration and inquiry around our mutual vulnerability as humans creating and living through a crisis of mass extinction. 

It's also about pain: I experience the normalization of brutality in our culture as traumatizing. I find it an endless source of confusion/fascination that so few seem to share this sensitivity.

(Btw, I don't think it's a super far-fetched coincidence that a feminist performance artist, working with culturally-induced trauma, gets gynecological cancer.)

For me, the ugly dancing ups my vulnerability. And, as an educated, middle-class, white woman, this new work allows me to express paradox more viscerally. Pain and privilege. Healing ritual/angry protest. Awkwardness and vulnerability as art.

Where
Venue 2, Downtown Community Centre
755 Pandora Ave

Show Times
~75 min
18+ not suitable for children
Thu  Aug 24  9:15 pm
Sat  Aug 26  12:45 pm
Sun  Aug 27  1:15 pm
Mon  Aug 28  9:15 pm
Tue  Aug 29  7:45 pm
Sat  Sept 2  12:15 pm

Tickets $9 at ticketrocket.co
Link to Facebook event

Another Explanation for My Kids

Several years ago I wrote this letter to my daughters. I know they haven't read it.

Like many people in our culture (including myself) they don't often have the patience to listen to an explanation or even ask for one.

And, of course, I do understand that an old, chunky mother is embarrassing enough, even without parading her weirdness and nakedities around town and social media! They're also irritated, no doubt, by the thought that I might have a good reason.

Recent #uglydancing. My upcoming Victoria Fringe show is entitled Naked Ugly Dancing.

Now they are 10 and 15 and, even though I think it's still a pretty good letter, I'm going to attempt to add to the explanation.

I got Stage 4 cancer almost 2 years ago. I was really overwhelmed by a lot of things but especially working as a university instructor. I think that made me get really sick. For me, as a teacher, it was important to share certain understandings about how humans need to think differently. But I made people afraid. No one was interested in supporting me or willing to believe I had good reasons. (Does that sound a little familiar? Haha!)

An example of a difficult thing to learn that you might recognize is how in your schools you have learned about residential schools and how our Canadian government and churches hurt First Nations children very badly and caused harms to First Nations people that continue. For instance, many of those children who grew up abused have turned to addiction and abuse themselves; and, because the children were forced to speak English or French, many First Nations languages have been lost.

This is very difficult for us to understand. Because we want to trust our government and our country. We want to believe that everyone gets the chances we get.

The problems in our world are caused, in many ways, by what people believe. So when we believe we have a trustworthy country, for example, we might not look to see things that happen that are actually very harmful.

Or we might blame another group for those harms.

Unfortunately, the way we live and believe in richer countries like Canada is the cause of most of the difficulties on earth... like global climate change, poverty, weapons, war, etc. 

One example is shopping and poverty. We get many things like clothes and toys and food and things for our house. Almost everything we buy involves people in poorer places being paid very little to make it or grow it or dig up the materials for us. 

This example is very tough to swallow. Because we need some of that stuff and because our society expects us to look or live a certain way. We are pretty stuck. And there are many more examples that show how we are stuck. Another is how we need to drive but we don't want oil (which needs to be sent all over the world so people can put gas in their cars and heat their homes) to pollute our oceans and land.

I think that's why people want to believe we are nice and don't want to look at how not nice we are. Because in a way, we are not being un-nice on purpose. We are in a culture and a system that surrounds us and no one can just step out of it.

So, one of the reasons I do what I do, is to make people think about what "is normal."

I have started to do ugly dancing in the street and for my upcoming fringe show because I think of it as a kind of action to create healing. I'm dancing out some of the ugliness. For the health of our culture and my body.

I also think of it as a cultural antidote. An antidote is something that removes poison. So if there is some not nice stuff going on but people aren't seeing it, maybe doing something the opposite of normal can help remove some poisons. 

One thing about our culture that is interesting is that when women aren't young anymore, they are considered ugly. But I'm not poisonous. I'm a caring, loving person. I'm a wise person. I'm a person who shouldn't be ignored.

So if I show up as an "ugly" dancer on the street, I am doing something very non-harmful and expressive. Why should that be a problem?

A lot of my performance art is about giving people the opportunity to question their beliefs.

It's embarrassing for me too. You have no idea. But, as I've tried to tell you guys, some things are more important than embarrassment.