Aftermath.
In my final year of my undergraduate degree I made my first full performance with a live audience. The work was based on the fact that as a child I practiced my pirouettes for Ballet in the bathroom after my mother’s bath. She used copious amounts of talcum powder, which would make a layer on the tiles of the bathroom floor. This was the perfect substance, being slightly slippy, for me to test my footwork and the marks would give me an indication of the accuracy of my gestures. In this performance, I filled one of the project spaces at Wimbledon College of Art with about a centimetre layer of talcum powder. During the performance I moved through the space, repeating movements from my ballet and contemporary dance repertoire. These movements were done in the style of ‘marking’ which is a rehearsal method for testing the dancer’s memory of a choreography and going through the motions but not at full pelt to conserve energy for the stage show. As a result, the audience feels like they are a voyeur on a private and intimate rehearsal space. The work also challenged various conceptions of womanhood. Dancers bodies are often overly sexualised and as a young dancer I was critically aware of this. The smell of the talcum powder which fully permeated the space is so evocative of caring for an infant, undercut this reading of a young dancer alone in reverie.