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Daina Ashbee (Canada)

In choreographer Daina Ashbee’s fiercely provocative feminist work, dancer Paige Culley coils and uncoils as she works her way around the stage. In her nudity, she is both vulnerable and powerful. The exertions have the look of ritual, and that’s just what Ashbee has in mind. She’s created a meditation on her own menstrual cycle—an explosive mixture of the deeply personal and the fiercely political.

Ashbee takes the body as her material for metaphor, and her work is one of startling dynamics. At one moment there is rhythm and repetition, at another complete darkness, and the line between beauty and agony becomes blurred. For all her obsession with pain, however, the creator takes unflinching pride in the female body. Haunting, visceral and unsparing, this is a work that calls not so much for spectators as for witnesses.

Bold and exceptional… enlivens sensations and provides a moment to recognize one another’s humanity.

—The Dance Current

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