Nanda

This is a collective performance combining video and live action. Four female performers enact ritualistic gestures drawn from childhood trauma, adolescent shame, bodily memory, and inherited folklore. The piece unfolds on a red platform and a small restraining stool that forces the body into a folded position.

The performance begins with performers dressing each other in stockings and cutting them open. Actions include tearing down jackets, swallowing feathers, walking barefoot to mimic factory rhythms, and removing jewelry. Projected footage shows oyster lines, hair shaving, and other parallel rituals.

Colorful ribbons recur throughout—wrapped, scattered, tangled with bodies and audience alike. A birthday greeting is shouted to a performer pinned beneath the stool, in a scene that blends celebration with control.

I served as choreographer and performer, shaping movements built on repetition, fragmentation, and resistance. This work is not meant to “express,” but to summon: to summon the pain of being told to “be good,” the blame that has nowhere to land, and the memories dressed in gentleness but still seeping with blood.