Amsterdam Weekly, 2-8 june 2005

Feel me, touch me

The BodyLounge experience takes art into e new dimensions of strange intimacy.

By Dara Colwell

How to explain BodyLounge, a physical multimedia, interactive dance performance? The song ‘Touch- A Touch-A Toch-A Touch Me’ as well known to Rocky Horror Pictures fans immediately comes to mind.

‘Thrill me, chill me, fulfil me! The lyrics continue in my head, as I roll around on the studio floor, several hands touching me simultaneously.

A voyage of physic movement, BodyLounge was created by performer Ina Stockem to blur the line between  real life and theatre. ‘ It’s like a social happening, a totally alive experiment’, says Stockem. ‘BodyLounge becomes a laboratory and each night is different., it all depends on the participants.’ The show, which debuted at the Paradiso last October and has since hit the Pick Up Club and Sugar Factory, immediately drops the audience onto  the stage, where they are guided by any one of the trope’s 19 performers a melange of actors, musicians, dancers and vene physiotherapist.

Like many performances, BodyLounge begins in the dark- only this time, the entire audience is literally left there, blindfolded. ‘ By taking your  sight away, you are immediately thrown back on your other senses’, says  Ute Pliestermann, who organized the production and also performs.’ It takes censorship away. It’s like covering your eyes when you are a child- because you think you won’t be seen, you are allowed to do anything. So you express with complete freedom.’

BodyLounge encourages playful interaction, but freedom wasn’t my exact starting point. Informed by a cheerful disclaimer that particiüation was ‘ entirely at your own risk’, I had a quick glass of wine before being blindfolded. I felt mild performance anxiety because rather than remaining passive during the show, I knew I would be in direct contact , or ‘ dialoguing’ with my hosts. And if I was unreceptive the interaction would be the  stale.

But as I entered the lounge, my arms around the shoulders of a woman my height, I quickly relaxed. My guide twirled under my hands, guiding me by the waist to another performer who huged me tight, then suddenly dissapeared. Someone came up behind me, blowing a musical instrumenet into my back as another exhaled in my face. I was handled this way and that, bent over leaning bodies, both male  and female, and tickled by anonymous fingers. At one point, I quickly chased across the room after two guides, my hands firmly  planted on their heads. I could smell shampoo, sweat, warm breath and hear laughter and rapid footsteps. Suddenly, I was on the floor. A piece of chocolate was smeared across my lips then thrust into my mouth and next, someone- was it a performer?- cloutched onto me, barking. I was then touch-a, touch- a, touch-a touched for the next half hour. Or maybe more.

At BodyLounge, the performance both moves around and through its audience, but what  I found the most exhilarating was how  much everything depended on trust. As an interactive participant. I had to trust my interaction with unseen strangers, which allowed me to play. Having hands coming at me from all directions certainly helped unlock boundaries. ‘ Touch is really becoming a taboo, it’ s experienced as being either scar or dangerous’ , says  Pliestermann. ‘ People need to be touched , not only in a physical way, but in a deeper, ideological way. This is what we’ re trying to achieve with BodyLounge.’

Or, as one guest put it so well on their website, ‘ BodyLounge is the closest you can come to the first good sex in your life. It can also be like being a baby again, blind and clumsy and loving your nine armed, seven legged mother whatever she does to you, even if she spanks,’ she writes. Check out the website: www.bodylounge.eu