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