Dancer Nate Yaffe unmasks his vulnerability and sheds constraints in faith hole

Presented by plastic orchid factory, the solo work is performed partly in the nude

By Gail Johnson

Faith hole.

plastic orchid factory presents faith hole on October 25 and 26 at 7 pm at Left of Main

DANCER NATE YAFFE describes himself as having been a hyperactive child, noting that other terms like “neurodivergent” would more commonly be used today.

“There was a point where it all shut down for me,” Yaffe says in a phone interview from his home base in Montreal. “I was told in many different ways to not move. And so I didn’t.”

Having suppressed the urge to shift his body, everything changed when some “nerd” friends convinced him to take up swing dancing when he was 15. While his pals only lasted a week or two, he stayed with it for years. From there, he went to a performing-arts high school, where he started learning contemporary dance and some classical ballet before attending a formal dance school for more.

His newest piece, faith hole—which is being presented in Vancouver by plastic orchid factory on October 25 and 26—explores his relationship with his body. Some of the work is performed in the nude, Yaffe unmasking himself from former constraints that came with his dance training.

“It’s very normalized in dance to constantly try to improve on your body in this top-down way, where you look at yourself all day every day. It’s not only encouraged, it’s the way to be, where you are constantly, in very specific ways, trying to improve every centimetre of your body; that’s why you’re there. There’s an ideal for every part of your body, and I started to feel not well, like physically achy….I just relinquished myself, despite myself and despite my shame around trying to make my body more desirable and valuable and beautiful. I started a process of unwinding, I call it, un-self-correcting. I had to stop self-correcting myself constantly. There is a version of me that is less uncomfortable, less hurting, where I can be feeling well, and the key is me giving up and having radical trust that my body actually knows what it needs.”

By revealing his own vulnerability, Yaffe is hoping to give permission to others to unmask, even if it’s only for the hour-long duration of the show. The piece, he says, is a love letter to the dance, queer, and neurodivergent communities.

“It’s like trying to harness a bucking bronco,” Yaffe adds with a laugh. “When my body is feeling empowered it just starts moving like a flurry of movement all over the place, and that’s what I’m trying to harness. I’m trying to figure out a container for it that doesn’t denature its wildness and its utility, which for me is to dive into the unknown and give my body permission to move the way it wants to, even if it’s kind of scary, and do it in front of witnesses.

“We all mask—we all change our movement and our behaviour in order to pass more smoothly and more unnoticed in the normative world. In doing this practice of un-self-correcting I trust that my body will tell my own story,” he says. “There’s all my history and muscle memory, which includes classical dance, which includes me as a hyperactive child, and which includes me today.” 

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