check your body at the door *

Olympia, Édouard Manet's famous and controversial painting, caused a stir in the 19th century for showing the naked human body as it is, breaking with the aesthetic canons of the time and with the idealisation of the female figure in art. Inspired by this fact, Arenas' ongoing research explores how dominant narratives in art history have influenced our current understanding of gender identity and body image in Western cultures. check your body at the door is a solo performance in which the artist Iria Arenas in collaboration with the choreographer Aura Antikainen presents the first outcome of this research. By means of House Dance, a dance style born in Chicago and NY underground clubs in the early 80s, a framework is stablished in which tender and humorist gaze on body stereotypes, dance and performance come together to show the singularity of the human figure, expanding beyond the clichés and certain normative values that so constrained our realities in the past and whose legacy continues to have a great impact on our society today.

* The title of this performance is inspired by the documentary project that Sally Sommer initiated in 1992 about some of the most notable freestyle house dancers and their lives outside the clubs in the 1990s. For more information, visit: www.checkyourbodyatthedoor.com.