Peggy Baker’s new work, her body as words (2021), is a sound and film installation that fragments and explodes notions of female identity as expressed by nine Canadian dance artists. Inspired by the 2009 translation of Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, Baker entered a deeply collaborative process involving personal conversations with the performers. Dancing the complexities of their lived identities, these artists offer gestural renderings touching on themes of race, gender expression, sexual orientation, sexual appetite, pregnancy, miscarriage, motherhood, disability, physical labor, and aging. her body as words was filmed by Jeremy Mimnagh and features sound design by Debashis Sinha.
Peggy Baker
Peggy Baker is acclaimed as one of the most outstanding and influential contemporary dancers of her generation. Her unique abilities are the product of an education in both dance and theater, pursued initially through the drama department of the University of Alberta, with The School of Toronto Dance Theatre, and in New York at the Martha Graham School and the Herbert Berghof Studio.