"Touch Me Here" This Thursday and Friday at Velocity

GUEST ARTIST SERIES: PEGGY PIACENZA Touch Me Here Encore Performance SEPT 3 + 4 / 8PM Velocity Founders Theater 1621 12th Ave on Capitol Hill TICKETS + INFO // 206.325.8773 // velocitydancecenter.org

“Her work is frequently bold, challenging audiences to watch and think about dance out of traditional boxes, and this new solo extends that edginess.” – Melody Datz Hansen, Seattle Dances

Touch Me Here is multi-disciplinary movement memoir created and performed by Seattle-based choreographer Peggy Piacenza with an original live score performed by cellist Scott Bell. A luminary performer and a unique choreographic voice in Seattle’s dance community, Piacenza’s 25-year career includes her own evening length works as well as star turns with Pat Graney Company, 33 Fainting Spells, Deborah Hay, Dayna Hanson and others. A very personal departure from her past work, Touch Me Here is a movement memoir in which Piacenza excavates her own lived experience to connect with audiences human to human.

Peggy Piacenza's Touch Me Here

The show is already closed and the scenery struck and stored, but by all accounts Seattle dancer and choreographer Peggy Piacenza's solo performance piece Touch Me Here was a great success.  In the preview article in Seattle Dances,  Melody Datz Hansen writes:

Peggy Piacenza’s new solo work, Touch Me Here, opens this Thursday, November 20, under the crumbling balconies of Seattle’s Washington Hall. Jimi Hendrix once played here, and Billie Holiday, but some of the windows are now boarded up and giant chunks of plaster have fallen from the intricately carved moldings. For Touch Me Here, the stage is dark and the audience sits in a half-moon configuration facing the side of the theater. Piacenza stands on a brightly polished wooden dance floor, dressed in a wildly-patterned floral jacket and bright pink stilettos, her head topped with a bobbed wig and fingers caressing an unlit cigarette. Despite the disguise, the venue, choreography, music, and narratives in Touch Me Here are essential Piacenza, and her performance imparts a personal history and ethos as naked as the hall around her.

Read the whole preview here, as well as Ciara McCormick's review, and take a look at the video preview and some production photos of the set and performance below: