“Warning: this performance may contain nuts” Stamos @ OFFTA
More : contemporary dance, George Stamos, Liklik Pik, male nudity, OFFTA
Fresh from the success of Husk at the Agora de la danse in February, George Stamos is back on the stage with a 2-man duet inspired by, well, getting piggy. Liklik Pik (i.e. “little pig” in case your Papua Guinea pidgin is a little rusty) promises to “playfully evoke the pig as a totem animal, following impulses and convergent queer tangents along the way.”
Related Posts
- Political Mother shares misery at the NAC
- Performance immersion: Piss in the Pool 8
- Short film, big ideas: Paul Neudorf’s Strands
George Stamos premièred Liklik Lik with adorably compact dancer Dany Desjardins at Toronto’s Buddies in Bad Times to rave reviews this winter. While his Husk was an ensemble piece with endurance-testing sequences for three dancers and a live musician on stage, the sprightly choreographer’s one-hour duet for the OFFTA will toy more with references to low-brow themes and animalistic sexuality. “It’s definitely got that piggy aspect. I’ve always been interested in the anthropomorphism of fables. A big theme of my work is the power of the intellect vs the power of the body,” Stamos told us last winter when we chatted about his banner season of three new pieces that (I think) may eventually function as a trilogy of sorts. The ensemble Husk, Liklik Pik the duet, and the pseudo-solo Illegal Tender.
“I’ve been enjoying working with a guy in Liklik Pik,” Stamos told us with an innocent sparkle in his eye. All three pieces that he’s brought to the stage this year have had overtly queer elements, whether it was the highly topical transgender metamorphosis in Husk, or the insertion of a video of himself giving a lap-dance to Quentin Crisp in Illegal Tender. “All Dance is Gay!” George declared laughingly.
The two-night duet performance will combine “references to children’s stories, pets, lounge lizards and gay ‘pig-boy’ culture,” with the dancer’s trademark tongue-in-cheek artfulness.
“These guys are pigs,” the programme notes warn, with the obvious juxtaposition of the dancers wearing pig masks letting you know that there is some refreshing literalism at work here. Like fellow OFFTA artist Jess Dobkin who brings her Lactation Station to Usine C on Saturday, Stamos is interested in flattening and merging the parts of the body that are supposed to be off-limits, that are too dirty or intimate or profane to be used in art.
While he may make his thesis statement about totem animals and joke about balls being seen and shown in the piece, George Stamos isn’t kidding. One of his inspirations for the piece is a quote from esoteric Franco-Chilean filmmaker Alejandro Jodorofsky: “the asshole is the gateway to love.” And with that tantalizing whiff of man-crack, we suspect he’ll will have us eating right out of his trough.
Liklik Pik
by George Stamos w/ Dany Desjardins, music by Jacky Gallant
May 26 + 27, 10pm @ Théâtre d’Aujourd’hui
3900 St-Denis, Montréal
0 comment
Comments are closed for this article.