POUTANES

a confrontation with pleasure

watch on vimeo

“performer of the new generation: committed and especially candid in her expressiveness, without losing form”
Theaterkrant

“It is a dance to get goose bumps: close to the skin, intense, confusing and also comical"
Eindhoven Dagblad

A female body travels through different states and places. The stage seems to be a space for trade, exposure and intimacy, while the performer challenges the friction between the illusion of sex and actual sexuality. Treating her own body as an object, she explores where the true ownership of her body lies.

POUTANES a hilarious yet at the same time painful plea against selling out the female body.

Concept & choreography: Eleni Ploumi

Performance: Eleni Ploumi

Advice: Sara Wiktorowicz, Heleen Volman

Repetitor: Sarah Prescimone

Trailer: Martin Kers MMXI

Supported by: Makershuis Tilburg, DansBrabant

Thanks to: Heleen Volman

Special thanks to all sex workers that were willing to talk with me and help me with this research

POUTANES: how it started

“…and maybe Sugar was renting out her body, yet she owned her soul.”

Reading ‘The crimson petal and the white’ by Michele Faber at the age of 16, pressed the ON button of societal prejudices and preconceptions, for good.

Making a work about poutanes (prostitutes in Greek) goes way back in time; ever since I had the simple and naïve question of how can people actively discriminate and denounce sex workers, while the illusion and promise for sex is flooding the urban imagery. And the big question of what it is to sell one’s body or one’s soul..

Considering the extremities dancers put their bodies through, the comparison between sex work and dance was inevitable, bringing me eventually into a research including interviews with sex workers regarding the use of their bodies within the context of their own work.

Requirements:

Duration: approx 30min

Space: black box or foyer