The Case for Invagination #3

Overview

“The Case for Invagination #3” is an interdisciplinary solo with improvised dance, puppets, and clowning. This third version of the piece includes monologues performed by Bindler’s belly button and scars who ask big questions about consent, trauma, and existential loneliness, to comedic effect.

“I might be vestigial, but I still deserve respect.” –Belly Button

“I was put together by Dr. Kelly and Dr. Mehta. They used two different suture techniques, which is why I look so different from the right to the left. My middle is just kind of a splotch.” –Knee Scar

“Someone recently said about me, ‘I couldn’t tell if that was a scar or a funny wrinkle.’ And actually, that really offended me because I’m not just a funny wrinkle.” –Neck Scar

The concept arose out of Bindler’s Body-Mind Centering® research on the embryology of the genitalia from a nonbinary perspective. She has toured workshops on the topic internationally and wrote articles about it for Contact Quarterly and the Journal of Dance & Somatic Practices.

“The Case for Invagination #3” addresses one particular aspect of the somatic material, the practice of allowing space/situations/people to invite us in, rather than injecting ourselves into spaces. This practice has social and political implications around embodying consent culture and as an antidote to the ways many of us have internalized capitalism and colonialism.

An invagination is a fold, a concavity, a feminist reimagining of space, not necessarily correlated with the anatomical vagina. Bindler makes her case: Why invaginate?? 1) Feels good. 2) Try something new? 3) Your cells will love it! 4) Intussuscept the patriarchy.

For more information about this performance, please see this thINKingDANCE review by Leslie Bush: https://thinkingdance.net/articles/2019/11/02/Single-Thing-Infinite-Folds

Nicole Bindler

Nicole Bindler is a dance-maker, Body-Mind Centering® practitioner, writer, and activist. She has been presented at festivals, conferences, and intensives throughout the U.S., Canada, Argentina, and Europe, and in Tokyo, Beirut, Bethlehem, Mexico City, and Quito. Recent projects include teaching about consent culture and disability justice in contact improvisation; somatic research on the embryology of the genitalia from a non-binary perspective; collaborations with Diyar Theatre in Bethlehem, Palestine; and presentations at the Future of CI Conference and the BMCA Online Somatic Symposium about rebuilding in-person dance and somatics communities in ways that tangibly address the inequities laid bare by the pandemic.

Credits

Created and performed by Nicole Bindler, Directed by Mark Kennedy, Music by Dustin Slaughter