Reverse Lap Dances is a visceral experience for and with one person. It emerges from a 10+ years long-distance collaboration between artists Mara Poliak and Layton Lachman and their desire to experience physical and emotional contact in a different manner. Both artists are interested in the politics of care, and how to create a space that is potentially transformative for everyone involved. The artists’ roles move between that of guide, oracle, dancer, bouncer, care worker, and collaborator. The title alludes to the form of touch that we enact — one that follows our own curiosity and enjoyment — as well as the possibility for power to surge and slip, to become unstuck and unwieldy. We are interested in how embodied senses of pleasure can align with collective liberation, how pain is held and transmitted between bodies.
Layton Lachman
is a choreographer who creates performances rooted in somatics, channeling these experiential practices into immersive, sensorially complex worlds. Layton is committed to dance practice centered on group study and collective authorship — with the understanding that we are always collaborating with those who come before, after, and with us. Layton received a BFA in Choreography from Ohio University, USA. After working for seven years in San Francisco alongside Abby Crain, Mara Poliak, Kathleen Hermesdorf, Sara Shelton Mann, and SALTA among others, Layton relocated to Berlin. For the past five years they have often been engaged with T.E.N.T. collective — creating experimental curatorial platforms — as well as teaching dance and developing their own ensemble choreographies.
Credit:
Foto: Layton Lachman
