Erotics of dissolution

Throughout this piece, four dancers (Clara Furey, Justin De Luna, Be Heintzman Hope, and Brian Mendez), dressed in casual alternative outfits in neutral colors with chunky sneakers, form ever-changing constellations. They cleverly utilize all planes of the stage, moving around seemingly randomly yet very intentionally. Most of the time, they connect with each other by entwining, touching, or simply admiring one another. At times, they revert into their own worlds, wandering off.

There are no clearly defined ‘chapters’ in the piece; instead, it presents a chain of experiments that flow into each other like exercises in forming collective bodies. The dancers oscillate between guiding and observing, exploring their sensuality with an animalistic, shameless attitude. This exploration manifests as a kind of dissolution into each other, and into the environment, only to condense and dissolve again, time and time again. The eroticism of this dissolution is tangible from the very beginning. 

Some movements evoke specific associations—riding an invisible horse, being handcuffed, pulling a rope, doing a yoga pose, something resembling a TikTok dance, or dancing seductively in a club. However, most of the movements in Unarmoured seem to originate purely from a desire to perform them, to experience their sensation, to feel how they would feel. A recurring act is that of guiding or pushing another body into position, facilitating the other’s pleasure—fundamental to any (successful) shared erotics. In one of the rare symmetrical moments, for example, two dancers massage the other two, with movements reminiscent of energy work — responded to with spines undulating and curling. When not actively participating, the dancers watch, rest, and wait patiently. 

All of the dancers are equally engaged, but their executions of the movements vary significantly. In the aftertalk, Furey mentions that ‘every body is its own universe.’ There’s clearly no fear of sounding esoteric here, but this statement highlights how the piece manages to reflect the crucial interplay of individual desires and collective imaginaries in eroticism.

“Unarmoured evokes a serious sprinkle of MDMA, reminiscent of both the introspective euphoria of the early moments of a trip, and the desire to share this euphoria.”

In various ways, Unarmoured explores the concept of ‘edging’. The movements do not seek to ‘finish’ as one would expect. Instead, there is a trance-like repetition that takes time for each movement without stretching it to a climax. Before such a state would be reached, the positions are already changing. If this performance were sex, it would be tantra. However, there are also many strikingly ‘silly’ movements, such as an endearing sidestep with toes in the air or random big jumps through the space. The dancers also occasionally perform sudden synchronized movements, satisfying our desire for order, only to quickly break the synchronicity and continue in their individual ways.

Sound as scenography

The music in this piece starts hard and strong before the performers even arrive on stage. Furey, who began her artistic career as a musician, has explained that her pieces often just attempt to embody the electro-immersive sound she works with. This also explains why she doesn’t use any scenography in the traditional sense in Unarmoured: the soundtrack, combined with the lighting, serves as the scenography. Brother Tomas Furey’s project Twin Rising has provided the piece with a dark, immersive, epic, industrial yet dreamlike electronic soundtrack with eerie vocal samples. He layers and spatializes the sounds in such a way that the audience, despite the frontal setup, feels enveloped in it as much as the dancers. The sound waves are almost visible, pushing the performers and being pushed by them. At times, it’s as if you can feel the sound vibrating between their limbs as they open it, lift it up, and pull it into their chests.

© Kinga Michalska

The setting created by this non-material scenography, in combination with the lighting design, feels mystical and sacred. The foggy, misty blue and green tones, combined with the rustling sounds or whispers in the background, evoke a nocturnal garden or a dark sci-fi jungle where various beings can meet—club meets graveyard. At times, the writhing, sweaty bodies in this Wong Kar-Wai color palette appear almost amphibian. Above the stage, rectangular black cloths frame the lighting, effectively ‘boxing in’ the illumination. They don’t fully box in the dancers though. Even in the lighting design, there is a sort of ‘edging’ as dancers are positioned in nuanced ways in relation to the light sources, on or outside the borders of diffuse light strips or in barely lit corners at the back, daring to take risks with visibility.

Tidal sensuality

The phrase ‘If I nationed myself / in the shadow / of a colossal wave / If only to hold on / by opening— / by Kingdom come’ from Ocean Vuong’s poem ‘Waterline’ served as a mantra for the creation of Unarmoured, the synopsis claims. This line quite literally introduces some more physical motifs of the piece.

Firstly, the waves. The abundance of wavy movements reflects a desire for something to flow through the dancers—receiving and then sending it onward. At times, the dancers achieve fluid, organic, and seemingly weightless moments together. At other times, the waves are sharper, more mechanical. Sometimes grooving, sometimes pounding. Not everything is soft; there is a clear search for tension and release. Because in contrast to her 2021 work Dog Rising, where Furey explored ‘contactless shocks’ during COVID-19, in Unarmoured the shocks are allowed to land. Dancers slam their torsos against each other or pull each other’s faces down to desired areas. Submission and domination ebb and flow among the performers.

© Carmen Leon

Another recurring motif is that of ‘opening’. Opening each other’s bodies by guiding them, but also opening their own bodies to the environment and, most interestingly, opening their environment to them. Frequently, the dancers seem to be cleaving and pushing through the air with their hands as if it were soft matter, opening invisible curtains or lifting up non-existent objects. Apparently, they are not limited to the contours of their own bodies or those of the others, nor to materiality – the air surrounding them is just as sensorially present and thus a potential source of sensuality. It all evokes a serious sprinkle of MDMA, reminiscent of both the introspective euphoria of the early moments of a trip, and the desire to share this euphoria. 

Sensuality without detours

What’s particularly charming about Unarmoured is its directness. The relationship between water and eroticism is shamelessly straightforward. In the same aftertalk, one dancer points out that our bodies are mostly made up of water and that ‘water penetrates everything and is penetrated by everything.’ And when asked about the ‘relationship between queerness and the aquatic world,’ Furey responds that queerness is in fact simply a given considering the cast; there’s no specific relation to water to be sought. The intention here is straightforward and doesn’t get lost in detours. Perhaps it is this simplicity, this non-reference, and the attempt to find direct access to our sensorial experiences that forms the foundation of eroticism?

Compared to much work surrounding erotics, the focus of Unarmoured refreshingly doesn’t seem to be so much on perception and being perceived, but rather on genuine experiment with sensuality. Claims that performers are ‘visibly enjoying themselves’ are often risky, but in this case, the pleasure of the performers is a condition for the artistic endeavor. Their faces appear unrehearsed, expressing sincere sensations—at times deeply concentrated or spontaneously smiling. But while Unarmoured is fundamentally rooted in joy and pleasure, it dares to take itself seriously by not becoming overly comical or light-hearted. Intensity and immensity are fully embraced – there is no hiding, no armour.

© Kinga Michalska