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Debris in a Skin-Tight Corset

Tighter, harder, longer, better, higher. Ballet is the fetish of the world. Skinny ballerina on her tippy toes, balancing time in a freeze frame with her militant performance. Tied up in being female, tied up in a corset, tied to a penis, tied up from being tied to perfection. Debris in a Skin-tight Corset is a fiction inside the ridiculous and exclusive history of baroque ballet de cour, an iconic court spectacle of early seventeenth-century France. In this dance performance work, Cassie Augusta Jørgensen explores the rooms in which politics were performed as entertainment for the upper-upper-class by comedy queens, into which she invites herself, Kate Bush, Marquis de Merteuil from Dangerous Liaisons, the Marquis de Sade, Rory Pilgrim and Roman Ole.
Debris in a Skin-tight Corset is a work of the inner eye, with choreography extracted from film and painting, the artists’ personal relationships to classical ballet, and the strictness and the tightness of Western beauty – so pretty it hurts.

Debris in a skin-tight corset is a three year old work. With time passing I’ve changed my mind over and over and again about it all. Now this work gets to live once more but in a completely different time and place. Both Rory and I have gotten older, I’ve grown boobies and I’ve even thought about changing the title to something more along the lines of The Guillotine Time or even just The Lady Dance, but everything got printed and published before I could make up my mind.
So what you‘re about to witness has the same title from when this work premiered in Lausanne at Les Urbaines in 2019 but with some changes within. Sadly the musician who was first supposed to compose the soundscore for us this evening had a Covid scare and had to stay behind in Paris. Instead I was lucky to have the sweet Roman Ole compose music for the show in only a couple of days and that is the music you will be hearing tonight. So please, sit back, relax and unbutton your pants because it’s about to get heated in this court.

Thanks for coming darling, and you too Gabriella … and oh you too Emily. If you‘re reading this before it has already begun, I am going to tell you a secret. I don’t really want to be here, but 300 years later I’m still here with all the ghosts of the past.
I am not a ghost exactly, but I am definitely going to be dancing with them tonight. Working from my inside eye, the noble people of the past are there in flesh, blood and bones. I feel them when I sweat. Sweat that’s been dripping from under my tight dress since I started imagining my participation in the French nobility sometime in April 1706, when the courts adored the feminine steps of the Belle Danse.
Female steps, and female shoes, and female hands, and female legs, and female breasts. Everything female.
Tonight, I am not alone. I am joined by minstrel Rory. Rory’s been playing for me since forever. It’s the relationship between me and Rory that makes the show. She tries to anticipate my every move with her harp and I predict her chords as I fall into these ballet steps that through the nonsense of ballet notation have left a great hole for interpretation.
So many secrets and so little time … or actually too much time to be left untold. I have so many people I want to thank but I want to do a special thank you to one amazing particular lady, the French Miss Chevalier d’Éon. A true lady of the hour who surely had a skeleton in her closet. Left undisclosed.

/ CREDITS /

CHOREOGRAPHY: Cassie Augusta Jørgensen

PERFORMANCE: Cassie Augusta Jørgensen, Rory Pilgrim

SOUND: Roman Ole

COSTUME: Alecsander Rothschild, Leila Hekmat

A production by Cassie Augusta Jørgensen in co-production with the Festival Les Urbaines.

/ TANZTAGE BERLIN 2022 /

CURATOR: Mateusz Szymanówka

DRAMATURGICAL SUPPORT: Maciek Sado, Maxi Wallenhorst

PRODUCTION MANAGEMENT: Johanna Withelm

The 31st edition of Tanztage Berlin is a production of the SOPHIENSÆLE.

Funded by the Senate Department for Culture and Europe.

With the friendly support of Tanzfabrik Berlin e. V. and Theaterhaus Berlin Mitte.

// DEUTSCH //

Enger, härter, länger, besser, höher. Ballett ist der Fetisch der Welt. Eine Ballerina auf Zehenspitzen, die mit ihrer aggressiven Performance die Zeit gefrieren lässt. Gefesselt im Frausein, gefesselt in einem Korsett, gefesselt an einen Penis, gefesselt vom Gefesselt-sein-an-die-Perfektion.

Debris in a Skin-tight Corset ist eine Tanzperformance, die im Rahmen der lächerlichen und zugleich einzigartigen Geschichte des barocken Ballet de Cour, eines ikonischen Hofspektakels im Frankreich des frühen siebzehnten Jahrhunderts, erzählt wird. Cassie Augusta Jørgensen erkundet die Räume, in denen Comedy Queens noch Politik als Unterhaltung für die Upper-upper-class performten – und lädt hierzu nicht nur sich selbst, sondern auch Kate Bush, Marquis de Merteuil aus Dangerous Liaisons, den Marquis de Sade, Rory Pilgrim und Roman Ole ein.

Debris in a Skin-tight Corset ist ein Werk des Inner Eye, mit Choreografien aus Film und Malerei, den persönlichen Beziehungen der Künstlerin zum klassischen Ballett und der Strenge und Starre der westlichen Schönheit – so schön, dass es weh tut.