Image by Nyda Kwasowsky

The Beast is an interactive solo choreography pirated from a proposition from Steve Paxton. Eroca Nicols, choreographer and martial artist, will co-create the work through the negotiation of touch with the audience.

Based on a pedagogical proposition pirated from Steve Paxton’ from his “material for the spine,” and his solo of the same name in (2010); The Beast is a translation of embodied gossip. I have never seen this work nor met Steve Paxton, “the beast” came to me through my friend, teacher and colleague Kelly Keenan. I have used the proposal as a warm up for myself and others. The structure is: one person acts like a beast while another person treats them like a beast. The first person embodies a non verbal beast while “asking” the other to touch them in the ways they wish to be touched.

The Beast deals with both the voyeuristic gaze of audience and the absence of the performer’s gaze–which I lose by becoming the beast; I create a context where the only looking is that of the assembled group. Aside from disciplinary crossings of dance, sex, race and gender performance, my training for this work is in another discipline, martial arts.

The Beast works on the power of bodies to act on other bodies, and the agreements–, be they social, political, or culturalartistic–, that harness and direct this power.

One person acts like a beast, idiomatically desiring. Another person treats them like a beast. Non-verbal dialogue develops a mode of speculative touch beyond appropriate or polite – but a mode built on conceptions of consensual and ethical collaboration. Play as the non-human activates human ethics.

The Beast is presented as part of Open Studio, in alignment with Ikebanapapa and Braids & Heritage.

Created and performed by Eroca Nicols with Mo LaPlante.
Developed by Eroca Nicols in collaboration with dramaturgy, written material: Evan Webber, Bobby Benson, set/costume design: Rae Fleury, Carmichael Jones.