Tea Gerbeza

On Its Own Terms, The Body Tells: A Review of Diana Hope Tegenkamp’s UNMUTE: Warmups for Body Vocality

While viewing Diana Hope Tegenkamp’s mesmerizing performance UNMUTE: Warmups for Body Vocality, I was captured by the body’s language as “gestures from the edge of speech.” Beginning with muteness, Tegenkamp prompts viewers to listen to the body’s own language, its cellular imprints, through motion as an attempt to invite speech. However, that speech doesn’t reach us in the way we expect. The choreography Tegenkamp’s body goes through begins to overlap, creating a ghostly palimpsest of speech. A new bodily shape where sound is silence. In this silence, the necessary gestures loosen what’s inside allowing the story of trauma to finally surface. Framing the performance through a series of “warmups,” Tegenkamp illustrates how the gentle intimacy of each warmup, each careful motion, gives the body space to speak on its own terms. Illustrating how one can’t force the body to do anything it isn’t ready for. On its own terms Tegenkamp’s body enacts its story of a person connecting to their pain, a pain that will be present in the body forever. But in this eternal presence is now a “sound [that] never ends, only continue[s].” With the emphasis on “continuing” Tegenkamp rejects the silence previously enforced on the body and continues past the edges of speech into a new knowing: one of care, love, and creation. Tegenkamp’s performance gifts this new knowledge to viewers, and I know I will carry it close for days to come.