Public / Private Parts ou L’Origine du monde is a hybrid dance performance and video installation which looks beyond the limiting binaries of public/private and art/pornography. A community of nine embodiment experts from various professional and cultural backgrounds create mindful body practices to awaken the senses. Through live performances and documentary videos, the group of contemporary dancers, sex workers, and sex educators, explore alone and expand together using the essential bodily functions of touch, breath, sound, movement, and their imagination. Intimate and innovative, their discoveries reveal new, hopeful interconnections that could benefit us all.
Duration: 75 minutes
Co-produced by Festival TransAmériques
With the support of Goethe-Institut Montréal + Diffusion Hector-Charland + Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques
Creative residencies Fabrik Potsdam + Tanzfabrik Berlin + Tanzhaus Zürich + Grand Studio (Brussells) + Espace Marie Chouinard + Par B.L.eux + José Navas/Compagnie Flak + MAI (Montréal, arts interculturels) + Département de danse de l’UQAM + Musée d’art de Joliette
Premiered June 10th, 2021 at the Festival TransAmériques in Montréal, Canada.
En réinvestissant ainsi la dimension tactile et sensuelle de leur corporéité, les performeurs·euses nous rappellent que toucher une autre personne avec respect est inévitablement un acte de réciprocité, et que cette égalité s’effectue sous une forme de partage qui ne saurait laisser intact le sujet qui s’y soumet. [...] La communion qui s’installe entre les performeurs et le public passe aussi beaucoup par la musicalité du spectacle : par le rythme envoutant de la bande sonore de Bendik Giske et Devon Bate, bien sûr, mais aussi par le rythme corporel, la respiration des interprètes, qui nous absorbe et nous entraîne avec eux dans l’expérience immersive à laquelle ils se dévouent sous nos yeux.
Chef-d'œuvre sensoriel [...] C'est (...) singulièrement libérateur. [...] Brillamment exécuté. [...] Entouré d’interprètes en chair et en os et de performeurs et performeuses numériques généreux, généreuses et fascinant·es, Gérard X Reyes propose un spectacle indéniablement sublime et important. Libératrice et déstabilisante, cette œuvre offre une vue sur nous-mêmes. Elle s’immisce sous notre peau, s’y installe et fait vivre.
Choreography
Gerard X Reyes
Performance
Gerard X Reyes, Justin Gionet and Emmanuel Proulx
Research Assistant
Andréane Leclerc
Dramaturgical Advisor
Guy Cools
Music
Bendik Giske and Devon Bate
Sound Design
Devon Bate
Sound spatialization
Dominic Jasmin
Props Design
Jasmine Reimer
Technical Director and Lighting Design
Karine Gauthier
Voice Coach
Ann Dyer
Production Directors
Elisa Hengen, Lucie Juneau and Alice Renucci
Produced, directed, performed, editing and interviews by (Video installation)
Gerard X Reyes
Codirected by (Video installation)
Poppy Sanchez
Performance (Video installation)
Bishop Black, Jasko Fide, JorgeTheObscene (aka Jorge Benavides), Rebecca Jackson and Mara Morgen
Director of Photography and Lighting (Video installation)
Kevin Klein
Camera (Video installation)
Jara Lopez Ballonga
Sound Recording (Video installation)
Antonio Vilchez Monge
Set Design (Video installation)
Jasmine Reimer
Set Design Assistant (Video installation)
Kaitlyn Smeeth
Editing (Video installation)
Julie Favreau
Sound Design (Video installation)
Devon Bate
Color Correction (Video installation)
Max Hilsamer
Transcription and translation (Video installation)
Ingrid Vallus
Video installation, projection and programming (Video installation)
Stéphane Gladyszewski
Lighting and Sound Operator for interviews (Video installation)
David J. Romero
Gerard X Reyes found pleasure in many places: Montreal trans bars, Manhattan vogue balls, Portland strip clubs, Berlin fetish parties. Each place offered him an escape from social norms, but each one also came with its own restrictive house rules. In The Principle of Pleasure, Gerard uses the theatre as a place capable of transcending limits to share his first true pleasure – dancing to the seductive songs of Janet Jackson. Voguing, stripping, glorifying eccentricity and embodying glamour open up the floor to exploring the controversial power of pleasure. Gerard and spectators join together to erase the boundaries that divide audience and performer to find ecstasy within and between their bodies.
Duration: 60 min.
A Gerard X Reyes production. With support from Canada Council for the Arts, Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, New York State Council on the Arts and Office of the Government of Québec (Berlin). Residencies: The Door (New York), The Spectrum (Brooklyn), MAI (Montreal), Studio Mange Mes Pieds (Montreal) and Dancemakers (Toronto).
Concept, Choreography and Performance
Gerard Reyes
Original Composition and Remixes
Devon Bate
“Control” Remix
Ty Harper
Featuring the music of
Janet Jackson
Light Design
Karine Gauthier
Costume design and tailoring
Vincent Tiley and Leigh Gallim
Make up
Christopher Lee
Helmet design
Persona non Grata
Artistic Advisors
Archie Burnett, Ami Shulman, Jose Xtravaganza, Benoît Lachambre, Amazon Leiomy, Kristina Marlen, Jordan Hall, Matjash Mrozewski
Int. Distribution
PLAN B - Creative Agency for Performing Arts
For the past twenty years, Gerard Reyes’ artistic practice has addressed the sensual and sexual body. Reyes is a non-binary (he/they), queer Uruguayan-Canadian dancer, choreographer, Certified Sexological Bodyworker, Intimacy Coordinator and Pioneer of the Montreal Ballroom community.
As a dancer, Reyes spent seven years as a member of the Compagnie Marie Chouinard (2006-07; 2009-13), for which they performed eight works of the repertory, have performed on international tours, and received a Gemini Award from the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television for Best Performance in Chouinard’s film, “bODY_rEMIX”. Reyes has performed extensively for many other choreographers including Jérôme Bel, Benoît Lachambre, Bill T. Jones, Luther Brown and Amazon Leiomy Maldonado.
Their first solo work, The Principle of Pleasure, explores the themes of desire, seduction and control by melding together voguing, stripping, eccentricity and glamour. Set to original remixes of songs by pop icon Janet Jackson, the solo premiered in 2015 at La Chapelle (Montreal) and has since toured across Canada and Europe including Festival TransAmériques (Montréal), SummerWorks (Toronto), P*rny Days (Zurich) and Tanzfabrik (Berlin).
In 2017 Reyes pioneered Montreal’s Kiki Ballroom Scene by leading weekly practices for local LGBTQ+ youth as well as producing and hosting regular Kiki Balls including balls for Canada Pride (2017) and Fierté Montréal (2018).
In 2019, Reyes completed a certification in Sexological Bodywork via the Institute of Somatic Sexology (Australia). This certificate allows them to teach somatic sex education privately, and assist in projects as an Intimacy Coordinator for stage and film. Through this practice, Reyes guides people towards deeper embodiment and connection with their sensual self.
Based on Gerard’s research and interviews with sex workers and somatic sex educators in Berlin, together they co-created Public Private Parts or L’Origine du monde, which premiered at the Festival TransAmériques (FTA) in Montréal, Canada.
Currently, Gerard is preparing a new piece NC2024 Revolution, which will explore our ancestral, embodied wisdom and our innate instincts, inspired by observing wild animals.
Pleasure and sensuality can be provocative topics for many people – which is not surprising given that as children most of us learned to be ashamed of our bodies and our desires. However, as I see it, sensuality is simply the giving and receiving of pleasure through the physical senses, and it is an essential element of being alive. Since 2013, I have been studying and developing practices that consciously expand the potential for human pleasure. Through my training in voguing and Somatic Sex Education, as well as my recent experiences tending to and observing wild animals, I hope to share the wisdom I have gathered by creating experiences that reconnect my audiences with their senses, and which expand the collective consciousness by reminding us of our connection to the planetary ecosystem. – Gerard Reyes
En réinvestissant ainsi la dimension tactile et sensuelle de leur corporéité, les performeurs·euses nous rappellent que toucher une autre personne avec respect est inévitablement un acte de réciprocité, et que cette égalité s’effectue sous une forme de partage qui ne saurait laisser intact le sujet qui s’y soumet. [...] La communion qui s’installe entre les performeurs et le public passe aussi beaucoup par la musicalité du spectacle : par le rythme envoutant de la bande sonore de Bendik Giske et Devon Bate, bien sûr, mais aussi par le rythme corporel, la respiration des interprètes, qui nous absorbe et nous entraîne avec eux dans l’expérience immersive à laquelle ils se dévouent sous nos yeux.
Chef-d'œuvre sensoriel [...] C'est (...) singulièrement libérateur. [...] Brillamment exécuté. [...] Entouré d’interprètes en chair et en os et de performeurs et performeuses numériques généreux, généreuses et fascinant·es, Gérard X Reyes propose un spectacle indéniablement sublime et important. Libératrice et déstabilisante, cette œuvre offre une vue sur nous-mêmes. Elle s’immisce sous notre peau, s’y installe et fait vivre.
