Coming to the UK for the first time this spring, Nashville-born Becca Hoback and Enactor Productions present Feminal, a confronting dance-theatre double bill exploring what it means to be a woman, through gripping storytelling, choreography, and striking visuals.
Feminal dives into deep and complex themes – what was the moment or experience that first sparked the idea for this production?
I think it’s a culmination of many different experiences and factors. I grew up with a lot of rules and expectations around my own femininity and sexuality, and as a young adult I felt like there was a massive divide between my everyday feminine identity and the kinds of qualities that I embodied and expressed in the dance studio. When I first had the chance to experience and perform Roy Assaf’s Girls, it opened a new kind of rawness and fully-body effort that connected me to my animal body – something that felt like it melded both sides of me into one cohesive woman-creature. My messiness and rawness suddenly felt connected to the way the I expressed my feminine identity, and I took those lessons forward to eventually create Initial Dissent.
Creating dance-theatre that challenges perceptions is no small feat – what has been the most surprising challenge (or breakthrough) in bringing Feminal to life?
Finding my voice – both literally as a performer, and creatively as a choreographer – has been a challenging and empowering part of the journey. A Girl challenges me to let my voice be heard. While I feel comfortable once I get to the stage, there is always a threshold I have to pass through in the rehearsal process to allow myself to fully sing, yell, chant, and scream without worrying about what other people in the building may think as I rehearse. Once that seal is broken, I can vocalise and immerse myself in the practice freely. When creating Initial Dissent, I similarly felt myself having to get comfortable with the idea of sharing this highly-theatrical and highly-stylized work – it’s something that naturally flowed out of me once I got in the zone, but I still felt the need to call the first presentation a “work-in-progress.” The structure of the piece hasn’t changed much since that first showing, but my comfortability expressing my perspective and standing by may creative choices has grown. Letting myself be seen and heard in a vulnerable state has been a big journey throughout the creation of Feminal.
Initial Dissent is a deeply personal work for you – how has the process of developing it shaped your own relationship with its themes?
Creating Initial Dissent allowed me to revisit many of the roles I played throughout my religious deconstruction process. Each scene offers a different phase of processing, and I fully try to embody the physicality, tension, mentality, and emotional state for each stage. It’s allowed me to look at the whole journey and personally own each part of the process – proudly claiming the role of the “villain” in my former-self’s world view. It’s a very different mindset than the one I grew up with.
With Feminal making its UK premiere, what excites you most about sharing this work with a London audience?
I’ve never been to London before, so I’m thrilled to have my first encounter with the community and get a sense of what resonates with folks locally. The two pieces are very different – the first is maximalist and highly theatrical, and the second is more poetically minimal stylistically. I’m so curious to learn about the similarities and differences between the UK experience and the US experience of these themes – If you do come, please stay after the show to chat!
If you could sum up the emotional journey of Feminal in three words, what would they be – and why?
Fierce, Confronting, and Vulnerable. The first pieces starts us off in mysterious territory – there’s a certain “bite” to the movement and theatricality. This rebellious spirit is immediately disarmed in the second piece, but all the while I’m looking the audience in the eyes. It’s something that could be intimidating, but I feel throughout the piece it melts into a sort of intimate rawness – of fully being seen by the audience and fully seeing the audience myself. My passion, physicality, and emotionality are on full display in both, and I aim to bring my whole self to the show each time, inviting audiences in to be just as present in the works.
What do you hope audiences take away from the experience of watching Feminal, and is there a particular moment in the show you can’t wait for them to see?
Ooh – I don’t want to give too much away! But I am excited for the audience to feel the energetic shift at the start of the second piece, A Girl. It’s a very tender moment, and I’m excited to feel the room sink into a new zone after getting immersed in the intense world of Initial Dissent. This moment in the evening feels like it will be special to experience together.
Feminal comes to The Space Theatre, London, from 7 – 10 May https://space.org.uk/feminal