Magical

The female body

Marina Abramovic once danced naked for six hours in front of an audience, her face covered with a cloth. Yoko Ono allowed spectators to cut the clothes from her body. Carolee Schneemann pulled a text from her vagina in “Interior scroll” and held a Dionysian ritual with naked bodies and raw meat in “meat joy”. And Martha Rosler parodied a woman in the kitchen, while Valerie Export produced “Aktionshose: Genitalpanik”.

These five influential performances from the feminist performance art of the 60s and 70s are the starting point of Magical. The French-Austrian choreographer and performer Anne Juren and the New York director Annie Dorsen examine in a very special way the relevance these performances may still have today: they put them in the context of a magic solo show. While the original work advocated the liberation of the female body, authenticity and transparency, Juren and Dorsen adopt a very different approach: that of illusion, construction and virtuosity. By way of the packaging of entertainment, they explore the contradictions of feminism today and in the perception of the female body (liberated, but often still viewed as an object).

In Magical you constantly question what you see: is it performance, is it magic, or is it pornography? It is none of these things and it is all of them.

‘Magical is a thoughtful, thought-provoking show that successfully masquerades as a slick piece of entertainment.’ – The New York Times