Spitting Image

Spitting Image is a three-part choreographic work developed by danced stances (Aurélie Dupuis and Zoé Lefèvre) together with performers lisa laurent, Marie Popall and Tyra Wigg, who also perform the piece. It forms part of Choréopolice/Choréopolitique, an ongoing collective research-creation project investigating the choreographies of control and normativity that shape urban space, as well as the forces that challenge and dismantle them.

Spitting Image—or, at times, Spit and Image—plays on several meanings at once: the exact replica, flesh of one’s flesh, but also the imperative spit it out—the urge to stop suppressing what remains unsaid and finally expel what irritates, unsettles or demands to be voiced.

The work establishes a field of action for three performers, navigating resemblances that insist, surprise and point, almost aggressively, towards what remains unresolved. It asks how the past continues to weigh on the political present; what returns, seemingly unchanged, demanding to be looked at once more. A photograph of a table. A gesture of enforced silence. A question: What is the sound of a situation that you dismantle? How do you get rid of […]? Is it yours?

On stage, the performers become the hosts of an unnamed collective event. Situations are taken apart. The refusal to relinquish privilege is confronted. Language is spoken backwards in an attempt to begin again differently. The work embraces the abrasive qualities of the voice.

Spitting Image is a collective attempt to subvert the images we refuse to see endlessly reproduced unchanged.