Exhibition
Tanz im August - 28. Internationales Festival
12 Aug 2016 – 04 Sep 2016
HAU 1 Hebbel am Ufer
Berlin, Germany
In her celebrated solo performances, Dana Michel investigates the endless diversity of human identity.
In her celebrated solo performances, Dana Michel investigates the endless diversity of human identity: slowed down beyond the point of recognition, bent into grotesque bodily shapes or completely sunken into herself, the performer resembles an unearthly being. The image of a ‘person’ is actually a distortion, warped as if in a fun house mirror, and often defined by arbitrarily applied stereotypes. Dana Michel traces these manipulated, disturbed perceptions of ‘reality’ and ‘self’ with uncanny intensity. For “Mercurial George”, she slips into the various personalities of an ‘inimitable performer’. “What do you do with the body?” she asks. Dana Michel describes her bizarre, comical, subversive performances as ‘post-cultural bricolage’, and arms them with elements borrowed from film, visual arts, fashion, sport or hip hop. It was only in her late twenties that the Canadian found her way to the performing arts; before that, she was a marketing executive, competitive runner and football player, and she allows these experiences to flow into her art brut as well. In 2014, Dana Michel showed her work “Yellow Towel” at Tanz im August.
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