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/

Vulnerability Vigil and Mural Opening: Nov 22 1-2pm Victoria, BC

BEAUTY AND RAPE: NO SAFE SPACE

I recently finished painting a mural in the driveway of Heart & Hands Community Health Collective and I am holding a...

Vulnerability Vigil and Mural Opening outside.

Sunday, November 22, 2020

Heart & Hands Community Health Collective

851 Cormorant St

Victoria, BC (so-called)

1-2 PM

Link to Facebook event

 It will be the first time that my two art practices that have defined so much of my adult life will come together.

I started holding the Extinction Symbol in my monthly Vulnerability Vigils in 2014, after I learned about the symbol. ESP, the anonymous artist who is the symbol's designer, has told me that I'm the first person in the world to hold the symbol while naked.

Please wear masks and practice physical distancing.

I am raising money to support the Native Youth Sexual Health Network (https://www.nativeyouthsexualhealth.com/), an organization by and for Indigenous youth, that works across issues of sexual and reproductive health, rights and justice throughout the United States and Canada. 

https://chuffed.org/project/mural-opening-fundraiser Also, consider bringing cash and we'll count at the event.

Some Backstory:

Less than 48 hours after I finished the mural, police informed Christina Chan, owner of Heart & Hands Community Health Collective, that a man had sexually assaulted a woman in the space in the middle of the night.

This hit me like a punch in the gut.

These things happen all the time, of course, but proximity makes it more personal. Add to that the disparity between the brief satisfaction of creating a beautiful, potentially healing space versus the brutality of what transpired so quickly after.

I have still not fully processed it. Because there is ALWAYS SO MUCH TO PROCESS and processing (feeling+thinking+analyzing EVERYTHING) is my area of expertise.

This Vulnerability Vigil will be a time to hold and feel these seeming opposites in our consciousness: beauty and rape, humanity and inhumanity, loving expression and colonization, etc. I invite you to process with me. I will also hold space for the victim and the perpetrator.

More Background:

For those who don’t know, I'm an advanced maternal age mother, 59, with two daughters who are almost 14 and 19. I'm diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer, all reproductive organs removed. I've lived more than 5 years past diagnosis. “Miracle patient.”

For the past 15 years, I have also been doing an extremely challenging (for myself especially, but for audiences also) performance art/activism project using my naked or nearly naked body to share and create space for vulnerability, under the umbrella title of the Human Body Project. I am, in fact, the first person in the world to stand on the streets naked holding the Extinction Symbol as part of my series of public Vulnerability Vigils.

I have dealt with super-intense mental and emotional struggles my whole life and I’m only alive because of my socioeconomic circumstances and my will to continue being a mother to my kids.

In the 90s, my 30s, before I had kids, I was a serious visual artist. I lived like a millennial before millennials. In some ways, it was the worst possible time art-world-wise to be a painter. But I was relatively successful. A lot of it had to do with the luck of privilege (upper middle class people in my milieu and in the 90s people had some disposable income), but still. Towards the end of my decade of serious painting I started having a desire to paint murals but it never happened (kids and ill-fated career in academia).

Recently I’ve been looking more closely at my isolation, invisibility, and lack of rewards in my roles–and they are very much heavy, culturally-weighed roles–as a “wife” and “mother.” I came to a deeper realisation that I need to do more things for myself, things that I want to do.

So I asked Christina if I could paint over the aged, faded mural that was there. I’m really grateful she said yes. Christina is a friend who, like myself, has been through some intense chronic illness, surgeries, and ongoing fragility.

We are also PHENOMENAL WOMEN working outside normal parameters and EXPLICITLY pushing back against an oppressive culture. Heart & Hands is a healing space.

People have said that my visual art brings them joy.

Haha, no one says that about my hundreds of performances and street actions. The Human Body Project work is challenging and fucking DEPRESSING because it’s about what people are finally starting to face: OUR GLOBALIZED DESTRUCTIVE COLONIZING CAPITALIST MISOGYNIST DIFFERENCE-HATING CULTURE IS WINNING.

So, hey. Come to see the mural but also come see ME, a person who has been doing the work for a really long time.

Come to the property, in the Canadian legal system sense, of another woman who has been doing the work a really long time. 

But, really, come be part of a creative space, a disruptive space, on the unceded traditional territories of the Lekwungen peoples (today known as the Esquimalt and Songhees Nations), a people who once looked after the world and weren’t super big on rape.

Thank yous:

Again, thanks to Christina Chan, owner of Heart & Hands Community Health Collective. And big thanks to my mural painting helpers: Fraea the Banshee, Sophia Howell Diamant, Ruby Sawyer, Catherine Wright and Faeron Wright-Jones.

Cancelled Upcoming: 

My show Schmope at the Vancouver Fringe miniseries Nov 26-Dec 5, 2020.

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.

ATROCITIES 'R' US at #YYJfringe 2019

Press Release
Winner of the 2018 Montreal Fringe Creativity Award (and Re-nominated in 2019)
Performance Artist Tasha Diamant returns to #YYJfringe

Fringe Venue Site C
Heart & Hands Health Collective
851 Cormorant St.
18+ Nudity
Aug 22  Thu  8:15-9:30 pm
Aug 23  Fri  8:15-9:30 pm
Aug 24  Sat  8:15-9:30 pm
Aug 29  Thu  8:15-9:30 pm
Aug 30  Fri  8:15-9:30 pm
Aug 31  Sat  8:15-9:30 pm
ATROCITIES 'R' US at the Victoria Fringe
ATROCITIES 'R' US Facebook event

Tasha Diamant has been exploring radical vulnerability as a form of art and activism since starting the critically acclaimed Human Body Project in small-town
Alberta more than 13 years ago. Unscripted, without a conventional narrative, honest and naked, Diamant shows up as vulnerably as possible to mirror humanity's state at this terrifying moment in history.

Raw, yes, but she can also be pretty funny. Comedian Maria Bamford has joked: "Weakness is the brand." Riffing, Diamant says: "Pain is the brand." 

Diamant self-deprecatingly shares challenging truths about herself, such as struggling with severe emotional pain; surviving Stage 4 ovarian cancer; spectacularly failing to thrive in the cult of academia; mothering in isolation; etc.

The baring of body and self is also about reflecting the culture. Her work falls in the Shamanism and Elderhood Department, if Westernized, globalized consumer-people had
such a thing. Diamant is white, educated, and privileged. She has often spoken about her work as a way to use her privilege and pain to interrogate and criticize her culture.

And as a way to model vulnerability and show solidarity with those who are most vulnerable. In fact, Diamant takes her art to the streets. For years, often alone,
she has held regular "Vulnerability Vigils," standing naked in public, in some cases holding the Extinction Symbol. (Vulnerability Vigil on August 18, 2019)

By exposing herself and leaving herself open to judgment, audience members' issues—through their projections—may also become disclosed. Diamant is
subverting audience expectations of who is responsible for what and, yes, it's uncomfortable. But necessary.

In performance and in public, Diamant hopes to offer a form of cultural healing for a civilization that renders older women invisible, has no shamanic tradition, and
is destroying the world. For Diamant, who began naked performance art/activism in 2006, the need for a cure has gone far beyond urgency.

Tasha Diamant, 57, lives in Victoria, BC, and is married with two daughters, 17 and 12. Work she has been paid for: waitress, journalist, visual artist, yoga teacher, university
instructor. She has participated in several community and prison theatre projects. This is her 10th anniversary as a fringe performer. Diamant is a privileged, cis, straight woman of European descent who is not actually much of an extrovert.

"In a space with no limits, we nonetheless carry limits in ourselves, play roles and seek confirmation. 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

"You connect all the dots."
— audience member

tashadiamant@gmail.com   humanbodyproject.org

ATROCITIES 'R' US at Montreal Fringe 2019

ATROCITIES 'R' US
At Montreal Fringe
June 5-June 16, 2019

Venue 8
Black Theatre Workshop Studio, 3680 rue Jeanne-Mance
75 minutes
16+
Nudity
in English/en Anglais
$8-$12

Thursday     Jun 06     7:30 pm
Friday          Jun 07     5:30 pm
Saturday     Jun 08      4:00 pm
Sunday        Jun 09     8:45 pm
Thursday     Jun 13     11:15 pm
Friday          Jun 14      6:00 pm
Saturday     Jun 15      9:15 pm


Press Release
for ATROCITIES 'R' US
Montreal Fringe 2019

Tasha Diamant has been exploring radical vulnerability as a performance art form since starting the critically acclaimed Human Body Project in small-town Alberta more than 13 years ago. Unscripted, without a conventional narrative, honest and naked, Diamant shows up as vulnerably as possible to mirror humanity's state at this harrowing moment in history.

Raw, yes, but she can also be pretty funny. Comedian Maria Bamford has joked: "Weakness is the brand." Riffing, Diamant says: "Pain is the brand." Diamant self-deprecatingly shares challenging truths about herself, such as struggling with severe emotional pain; surviving Stage 4 ovarian cancer; spectacularly failing to thrive in the cult of academia; mothering in isolation; etc.

Gift from J. Graydon

The baring of body and self is also about reflecting the culture. Her work falls in the Shamanism and Elderhood Department, if Westernized, globalized consumer-people had such a thing. Diamant is white, educated, and privileged. She has often spoken about her work as a way to use her privilege and pain to interrogate and criticize her culture. 

And as a way to model vulnerability and show solidarity with those who are most vulnerable. In fact, Diamant takes her art to the streets. For years, often alone, she has held regular "Vulnerability Vigils," standing naked in the open, in some cases holding an Extinction Symbol sign.

Diamant, 2014 "Vulnerability Vigil"

By exposing herself and leaving herself open to judgment, audience members' issues—through their projections on her—also become somewhat disclosed. Diamant is subverting audience expectations of who is responsible for what and it's uncomfortable.

In performance and in public, Diamant hopes to offer a form of cultural healing for a civilization that renders older women invisible, has no shamanic tradition, and is destroying the world. For Diamant, who began naked performance art/activism in 2006, the need for a cure has gone far beyond urgency.

"In a space with no limits, we nonetheless carry limits in ourselves, play roles, seek confirmation. 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."
— Geoff Agombar, Mainline juror 

"You are a role model."— audience member

"Powerful medicine...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, Dispatches from the Victoria Fringe 2017

"The definition of sincerity."— audience member

"You connect all the dots."— audience member

Tasha Diamant, 57, lives in Victoria, BC, and is married with two daughters, 17 and 12. Work she has been paid for: waitress, journalist, visual artist, yoga teacher, university instructor. She has participated in several community and prison theatre projects. This is her 10th anniversary as a fringe performer. Diamant is a privileged, monolingual English-speaking, cis, straight woman of European descent who is not actually an extrovert.

Contact  tashadiamant@gmail.com

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

Monthly Action May 27 2-3pm BC Legislature "the SHAME of PAIN is still a thing"

Monthly Action
When: Sunday, May 27, 2018, 2-3 pm
Where: BC Legislature (obsolete colonial structure) grounds

What/Why/How:
Performance art/activism. Radical embarrassment.
I use my naked (or semi-naked) body/self in public to express pain, improvise connections+push back against business-as-usual brutality. On behalf of the collective. Participation encouraged.

Healer, feeler, revealer. Paradigm shifter. Heavy lifter of paradox+pain. Ageing, overweight, cancer schmancerous. Recovering academic. Suburban mommy lady. Powerful+vulnerable. Privilege-user+vagina-haver. PTSD+lover of trees.

PS I've only started using the words "pain" and "trauma." Twelve years ago I started using the concept of "vulnerability" (four years before before Brené Brown's viral TEDTalk) because people would look at me blankly when I said this work emerged from pain. Now Pink is on her Beautiful Trauma world tour. There's always a Lululemonization (ie, capitalist yoga) when concepts go mainstream. So... not sure what to think except, ya, people are in CRIPPLING and SHAME-HIDDEN pain and even though pop stars are singing about it, the SHAME of PAIN in a culture of INVISIBLE BRUTALITY is still a thing.

MONTHLY vulnerability action/#NUD/vigil Mon Feb 26 3-4pm BC leg

For February's MONTHLY vulnerable action in the streets, I will be Naked Ugly Dancing #NUD in the vicinity of the black Queen Victoria statue on the BC legislature lawn. 

(Because capitalism, feminism, imperialism, colonialism and probably other isms.)

#NUD
Near the black Queen Victoria statue on the lawn of the BC Parliament
Monday, Feb 26
3-4 pm

People can join (dressed or not) if they like. #uglydancing in public is vulnerable even with clothes on.

For me, it all started with pain and the extra awareness of motherhood.

I see my work as pushing back against the most damaging culture in history (my culture).

I have refused to allow myself to be diagnosed as mentally ill, my "mental illness," which is emotional pain, is that I feel this: none of us has made it until all of us has made it.

The Naked Ugly Dancing is about dancing out the ugly, showing up in vulnerability, not having to be pretty and MORE! Because I can do, think, and feel more than one thing at once!

Facebook event
humanbodyproject.org

CANCELLED

CANCELLED

The next MONTHLY action will be near the black Queen Victoria statue on the BC Legislature lawn
3-4 pm
NEW DATE: Feb 18, 2018 (NOT Feb 17)

I will do some #nakeduglydancing 
People can join me if they want.


It’s my version of embracing vulnerability, dealing with desperation, creating a portal to a new paradigm, pushing back against a damaged/damaging culture, dancing out the ugly, and MORE!

Check out my latest video if you haven't already https://youtu.be/hGWAhxZK3VA

Women's March #yyj Jan 20, 2018

Women's March #yyj Jan 20, 2018

#NUD at Women's March

I'll be #NakedUglyDancing at

The Victoria Women's March
Saturday, January 20, 2018
11am-1pm
Centennial Sq (Victoria City Hall)

"We who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive." - Martin Luther King, Jr.

Anyone welcome to join me dressed or un.
#NUD at Women's March Facebook event


Also, I'll be in Herstory presented by Riot Grrrls Burlesque Revue on Saturday, Feb 3. Tickets at Eventbrite  
Herstory Facebook event

Last month's action. 6th anniversary of Vulnerability Vigils/monthly actions. Photo by David Howell.

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.

Mini-marathon of hopelessness, Monthly Action, Nov20 noon-2, VictoriaBC

Monthly Vulnerability Action

All welcome.
Monday, November 20, 2017
noon-2 pm
Pandora Ave between Vancouver and Cook streets
Harris Green Park, Victoria, BC
(an area of town where you might see/ignore gatherings of people who have dropped through the big cracks of our indifferent, casually violent culture)

COMPLIANT ACCOUNTABLE HUMAN MOTHER 
ALIVE with BLOOD and SKIN
uses DEMOCRACY and PRIVILEGE
to DEAL and HEAL
SYSTEMIC FIX?
HOLY SACRED PARADIGM
PRECIOUS VULNERABLE EARTHLINGS
US

Since 2012, for monthly Vulnerability Vigils on the street, I created signs to hold in front of my naked, exposed body. The words above in block letters are some of those signs.

My street actions have evolved. For Monday's action I plan to lay the signs in a kind of running track oval around Harris Green Park at Pandora between Vancouver and Cook. I'm going to run/ugly dance around the oval for a while. I am inspired by Terry Fox and Steve Fonyo and really want to push against the anthropocene by running across Canada in a naked Marathon of Hopelessness. But, for now, I'll do a mini-marathon.



...making the healing paradigm visible on behalf of the collective...
humanbodyproject.org
Twitter @HumanBodyProj
Instagram @hurtlingearthling
YouTube channel HumanBodyProject

#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

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.