Exposure

Exposure is an affective study of the nude, by the artist and choreographer Alexandra Bachzetsis in collaboration with Cullberg. As a choreographer and visual artist Alexandra Bachzetsis has frequently examined the choreographic strategies of the body and how culture provides source material for our gestures, expressions and commodification of fantasy.

In Exposure she’s subverting body stereotypes within pop culture, fashion, art and media. This act study, Exposure, reveals elements for performance in endurance, transforming static concepts of power into an empowering language of intimacy.

Includes scenes with explicit nudity, sexual content and violence.

On Exposure

Text by Dorota Sajewska, dramaturg

Exposure explores the performative power of the nude and the gestural by setting images of the body in motion. It examines the representational strategies of the naked body in art, film, fashion and digital culture, as well as the treatment of the performer’s live body in action through its exposure. Reframing the ongoing performance of the body in today’s culture of hypervisibility, the piece reveals media staging as a means of producing and distributing our desires. It also challenges us to experience the limits of the body and to reflect on the conditions of its vulnerability.

In Exposure Bachzetsis performatively studies the dialectical relationships between nudity and clothing, tenderness and violence, intimacy and alienation in order to empower the dancers and the spectators via affective images and situations. The representation of nudity is primarily concerned with the extreme physicality and the staged ambiguity of corporeality. It includes studies of everyday gestures, the excessive body cult in dance, intimate encounters and acts of exhaustion. The piece exposes the social power relations that shape bodily discipline, gender representations and sexuality in real life and on stage. By allowing gestures and actions to endure, exposure as a performative strategy opens up the possibility of rethinking our habits and ways of sensing the body.

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Production: Cullberg, in collaboration with All Exclusive
Co-Production: Gessnerallee Zürich, Kaserne Basel, Arsenic – Centre d’art scénique contemporain Lausanne
Supported by: Pro Helvetia, the Swiss Art Council, Kanton Zürich, City of Zürich

Text from the movie Pleasure directed by Ninja Thyberg.
Excerpt of choreographic material used with permission from Shay Latukolan.

Duration approximately 90 minutes, no intermission
Premiere September 24, 2024, Dansens hus, Stockholm

Exposure is an intense and image-rich performance that does not hesitate in the slightest, regardless of whether it is about brutal violence, bodily sexual desires or undressed bodies.

Svenska Dagbladet