Haunted by a swallowed slug, the performer presents a performative digestion complexifying ideas of purity, belonging and implications of ‘filth’ in their gendered, asian body. Between hostile objects, wet materials and dance, Slug Meal explores cultural connotations of “dirtiness” rooting from conceptions of immigrant food.
Set amidst the echo of ‘immigrant identity’, the scene becomes at once, both washed and dirty. The performer undulates between formal abstraction through decontextualized objects and the visceral emergence of their own felt body.
Playing with abstraction in a strange green screen world, the performer works with a hyper-physical and charged scenographic transformation. Between hostile objects and wet materials, the performer asks how context makes dirtiness. Dirty, as defined by whom? Memory, place, digestive slime. Purity politics. The body carried by water.
Awarded the Prix du CALQ Work of an Emerging Artist 2024
The performer shows up on stage as a witness to immigrant women seen as ‘dirty’ or ‘matter out of place’. Created and transformed from an autoethnographic essay on a traditional chinese eggplant dish and Mary Douglas’ definition of dirtiness as matter out of place, Slug Meal is a call toward the viewer to connect to the tensions and agency of a body in relation to its environment and it’s imposed gaze. Drawing from the experience in their own body, the performer invites viewers to feel the visceral imprints of water, pleasure and grief that remind the body back to its felt self.
The performer is haunted by the imagination of the slug, of slimy digestion, disgust, taste and distaste. This piece works with a digestive slime, emerging from the cultural meaning makings of taste and distaste, purity and dirtiness. This piece is a performative post-digestion of an inter-cultural inquiry between whiteness and the body I inhabit: complexifying ideas of purity, belonging and implications of ‘filth’ in an asian, feminised body.
“ Percutante et provocante, cette performance de Camille Huang fait évoluer la danse contemporaine vers de nouveaux territoires. À travers une démarche de création assumée et réfléchie, Camille Huang explore les thèmes de la pureté, de la saleté et de l’appartenance. Assistant à une performance chargée émotionnellement, le public est témoin d’une puissante transformation à la fois physique et scénographique », ont mentionné les membres du jury réunis par le CALQ.”
(Culture Montreal, 2025)
CREDITS
Choreography, Concept, Performance, Set Design by Camille Huang
Sound design by Camille Huang, in collaboration with
Reworked Piano and Spatialization by Victor Burton-Dallaire
Piano by Jenn Mong
Rehearsal Direction- Camil Bellefleur
Outside Eyes: Mélanie Demers, Angélique Willkie
Grounding Accompagniment and Eye: Hanako Hoshimi-Caines (2025)
Rehearsal Assistance - Anteah Chintoh (2025)
Lighting Consultation: Jon Cleveland (2025)
Stage Assistance: Indigo Danielson
trailer filmed by thalia danielson at anti-space
residencies: parbleux - inception residencies anti-space
workshopped at ATLAS impulstanz vienna
Labdiff Tangente
Possible with the generous support of the Canada Council of the Arts.
OFFTA Festival 2024 - World Premiere, Presented by La Serre - Arts Vivants
SUMMERWORKS LAB 2024, Presented by SummerWorks Toronto, co-produced DanceWorks and Buddies in Badtimes
LABDIFF 6 2025 - Presented by Tangente Danse, Montréal
SUMMERWORKS LAB 2024, Presented by SummerWorks Toronto, co-produced DanceWorks and Buddies in Badtimes
LABDIFF 6 2025 - Presented by Tangente Danse, Montréal