Video: “Mikva Girls: 1 cm, 2 cm”
An improvised dance, choreographed by Tess Dworman featuring Alexandra Tartarsky and Lucy Kaminsky. Modesty, Sensuality, Control and Degradation are swapped in this meditation on the body in pain.
Mikva Girls is a live experimental performance, incorporating a series of vignettes examining the sexual, social and ideological struggles of a group of Yeshiva girls coming of age in the 1990’s. In Mikva Girls, a series of movements and musical suites meditate upon the codes of female Jewish ritual dress, prayer and sexuality. Choreographed movement and collaged live analog/electronic sounds will be incorporated to evoke the clash between the closed environment of a modern Orthodox Jewish day school and the subcultural worlds of DIY squatter culture and feminist activism that the girls encounter outside of the classroom. Minna and Andrea traverse the ups and downs of Yeshiva life, sexual awakening and feminist coming into consciousness, as they chant, sing and dance their way through the piece.
Sound: Anthony Sertel Dean
Text, Writing & Direction: Marianna Ellenberg
Performers: Lucy Kaminsky, Alex Tatarsky, Maxwell Cosmo Cramer and Cassidy O’grady
Additional Choreography: Tess Dworman