CHANTAL the body is a text longing for perspective

by Veza Fernandez

The performance is an intimate anatomic spectacle that discloses the body as an overflowing text. Chantal is a manifold figure that unfolds from within the display of each of the voices that metabolises her quests for revealing the body-making processes at stake while loving, thinking, seeing, and hurting. She is a living anatomy doll that invites an audience to study alongside her how to witness a theatre from the limits of the skin, blinking between eyes and ears, sighing deep inwards to listen. She is a lesbian Venus growing from her songs of broken hearts and metaphysical poems, inviting us to open up to the way we order the parts that constitute us and our identities. She is a poet slipping through an actress, a sculptor through a lover, and an aphonic ballerina through a teacher. Chantal opens and dissects her body of many bodies, reciting text from one body into the next body, one language into the next language, one register into the next register. Chantal is an essayistic, visceral text choreography that radically redesigns the dispositive of the anatomical theatre, exploring what the staging of the inside beyond patriarchal norms and dominant regimes of attention thinks, mobilises, and imagines.

Zosia Holubowska co-composed several songs and performed live on the stage. The artist also developed a custom porcelain instrument in collaboration with Daniel Stuhlpfarrer.

Premiered at Brut Theatre on 06.11.2025

credits:

Concept Text, Choreography, Songs, and Performance Veza Fernandez Music 
Composition and Performance Zosia Holubowska
Performance Luis Murillo
Costume Design and Set Design Sarah Sternat
Video Art Installation Mariya Vasileyva
Light Design Leticia Skrycky


Text dramaturgy and choreographic advice Claire Lefevre
Dramaturgical Support and Research Nerea González


Production mollusca productions

A coproduction of Verein für Expressive Angelegenheiten and brut Vienna, with the kind Support of the Cultural Department of the City of Vienna, the Federal Ministry of Art, Culture, Public Service and Sport, SPIT Festival, imFlieger

Veza Fernandez is a dance, voice and performance artist based in Vienna.

https://www.vezafernandez.com/