My practice engages with feminist discourse surrounding the female body as labour, exploring the complex relationship between autonomy, empowerment and objectification within the Male Gaze.
Drawing on performative ethnography and autotheory, I examine how these tensions operate across professional dance and showgirl culture where the sexualised female body can function simultaneously as a source of agency, income and commodification. My work oscillates between subverting the Gaze, amplifying the Gaze as a means of reflection, whilst centring the voices of the women at the heart of the work.
As a professional dancer raised within a family of showgirls, my practice is informed by an intergenerational experience of an industry in which beauty, sexuality and performance hold significant social and financial currency. I am interested in the contradictions within this: how performing within the expectations of the Male Gaze can provide women with financial independence and a sense of agency, while simultaneously reinforcing systems of objectification.