Final Weekend to catch Liz Magic Laser’s Poignée piece as part of MOVE Festival at Centre Pompidou in Paris.
with Costumes by Slow and Steady Wins the Race
ABOUT THE PERFORMANCE
“This past year we have seen the rise of the outsider politician and a role reversal in the personality type of our new leaders. Whereas the politician has traditionally played the role of a mature parent, he or she now takes on the role of the child. Expanding my political therapy work into kinesthetic territory, I will collaborate with a movement therapist and a group of six dancers to develop a nonverbal personality test which we will offer selected museum visitors. The choreographic process will draw on personality tests developed by Carl Jung and more recent ones that apply psychological criteria to predict a politician success. Using Authentic Movement, an approach to dance therapy developed by Mary Starks
Whitehouse in the 1950s, and other movement therapy techniques, we will work with the dancers to explore four different archetypes: the disciplinary parent, the nurturing parent, the obedient child and the rebellious child. These archetypes are based on cognitive linguist George Lakoff’s Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think (1996) in which he uses a model of the family to analyze dynamics between politicians and citizens. My development process will use a range of movement therapy practices from Body Mind Centering to techniques based on tribal and shamanic dance. The choreography will also draw
on specific references such as Trump and Macron’s prolonged handshake (Paris, 2017). Our nonverbal personality test will be informed by the psychological analysis and strategizing that took place before this encounter between the two world leaders, as well as by the common practice of assessing character via the handshake.Just as an astrologer uses a horoscope, my performers will act as somatic therapists offering movement as a vehicle toward self-realization and betterment.” – Liz Magic Laser