FlucT Returns After Five Years With 'Tough on the Tongue' in New York

By Elena Vasquez

After a five-year hiatus, the choreographic duo FlucT returns to New York with "Tough on the Tongue," a performance installation at OCDChinatown's new downtown loft on Lafayette Street that runs through Jan. 22. The installation features old and new dances, sculptures and video, and premieres a new work on Jan. 8.

FlucT is the team of Sigrid Lauren, 40, and Monica Mirabile, 38. They met in 2010 at an experimental dance collective in Baltimore and named the duo after the idea of "fluctuation or going in and out of something," Mirabile said. Their high-octane physicality, driven by intimacy and brute force, addresses control, consent and reclaiming the female body.

"We're doing this thing that looks really violent sometimes," Mirabile said. "But what's actually happening is we're fully physically and emotionally supporting each other."

Why did the duo take a break?

The pair stopped performing because the work had started to feel too much like a job, the artists said. During those five years, they "became almost a legend," according to Liutas MvH, founder of OCDChinatown, which recently moved to a large loft on Lafayette Street.

"Many people knew of their work but had no chance to see it," MvH said.

MvH handed the space to FlucT with no rules or restrictions. "The idea was to create an expanded stage with props that would work independently as art pieces," MvH said, "but also that would be props for their performances. I feel like their project transformed the space almost to a magical dimension."

The duo's relevance has not faded: the source cites the Cornell University rape allegations and the recent conviction of Russell Brand as context for work that reflects what women experience in contemporary society.

What is the FlucT movement vocabulary?

In "Tough on the Tongue," the pair's focus on societal control shifts inward, asking how the body is affected in a world dominated by compulsive scrolling. They work from a somatic place, creating movement from internal awareness that connects body and mind.

To reach that choreographic authenticity, they invented a three-part movement vocabulary:

• Gaping: an emptying out, an expression "of a blankness in the face," Mirabile said.
• Gushing: expression becomes bigger. "In terms of movement and the rhythm, the speed changes," Lauren said. "It's like coming out of yourself."
• Glitching: the aftermath of consuming too much. "There's repetition, there's pulling at the skin and pulling at the body," Mirabile said. "There's even some kind of animal primalness to it."

What can audiences see?

The installation re-stages "SissyJokerLaPieta," an early work, on Nov. 19, and "Foul," the last piece performed before the hiatus, on Dec. 11.

The main room holds three sculptures, each requiring interaction to see video or hear sound. One screens a tiny video of a raucous performance on the heel of an enormous sculpture of a foot — best viewed lying on the floor. Audience members, not only performers, move through the space.

"The whole thing is sort of a movement piece for the observer," Mirabile said. "We work with the body. That's the center. So you're choreographed through the room in real ways where you get on hands and knees or lay down."

Opening night in October featured two dancers as doppelgängers of Mirabile and Lauren, entangled on a table, with painted pink faces, kneepads and sheer pantyhose. "This is the past," Lauren said of the performance.

In a room with a shower — the loft was residential before OCDChinatown moved in — four women interpreted the four stages of the menstrual cycle. One performer, losing her footing under a stream of water, grasped a drenched copy of "Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art" by James Nestor.

What comes next?

For the Jan. 8 premiere, the duo is still early in the choreographic process. After five years away, they are thinking about healing. "How have we changed after these five years of taking a break?" Mirabile said. "One of the big things is taking care of ourselves in a real, considerate way."

Lauren, laughing, added: "That doesn't mean we're losing our edge."