I was contacted today by an amazing group: PURE: Public Urban Ritual Experiment. They have an upcoming show, where the dancers reflect on their body image as it developed over their life spans. It sounds completely amazing, and if anyone wants to fly me to New York next weekend, I am totally there. If you happen to live closer, I am sure that this show will be well worth it.
This is the kind of show that will truly reach out and touch a certain kind of teenager. If your son or daughter is one who loves dance, it is absolutely not to be missed.
Here’s the info:
A mirror can be a friend or a foe, a source of bodylove or shame, depending on how you view your image.-Rita Freedman
25 dancers from PURE NYC have been on an incredible journey over the last few months, delving into their own psyches to bring you this historic dance theater show tackling core issues related to body image that affect each and every one of us.
Visual projections by Nasha Masha will be combined with the live vocals of internationally acclaimed singers, Kristin Hoffman and Tamar Kali, plus the live percussion of Brad MacDonald, Pete List and Dan Myers. Do not miss out on this one-of-a-kind event.
Friday Sept 18, 7pm and 9pm, $15 adv/$20 at the door.
Speyer Hall, University Settlement, 184 Eldridge St, NYC. Buy your tickets now.
(If you are interested in possibly bringing the PURE Reflections: Beauty Reimagined show to YOUR city to be performed by a local cast please e-mail kaeshi@pureglobe.org)
Thinking about that quote….Maybe we’d be a little healthier if we didn’t pay so much attention to ourselves, negative or positive?
Alice, your comment reminds me of the old joke about the guy who tells his doctor, “It hurts when I raise my arm.” And the doctor says, “Then don’t raise your arm.”
Ideally, it would be great if we (meaning young women, in particular) were not so preoccupied with body-image. But the fact is that we are — because our development of a healthy self-image is severely impaired in adolescence.
During the very time of life when our sense of identity should be most flexible, most adventurous, we are bombarded by over-sexualized, unrealistic and rigid images of what a female body should look like in order to be valued and loved.
While some of us are lucky enough to have friends and/or family to sufficiently “mirror” our essential selves as our personalities boil, seethe and ultimately solidify into an internally-based, healthy sense of identity, many of us do not.
Without an authentic, internal self-image, many of us are left forever searching the world around us to tell us who we are and what we should be, and forever condemning ourselves for not living up to impossible images.
This is the psychological equivalent of missing huge chunks of skin or musculature which, on the physical level, provides our viscera containment and definition; it is organ through which to relate to the world.
Without a sense of identity, we are helpless and in pain.
And denial of pain — as you suggest — does not heal the injury; it merely covers the wound to leave it fester.