No Words Work - An Evening of Psychoanalysis, Song, and Dance

What do you do when no words work? Does psychoanalysis, the talking cure, need words to work or is it just as much a somatic practice as, for instance, dance? Is Lacan's admission that there is no sexual relation perhaps a tipping of the hand: words never "work", never completely connect. Our irrational pursuit of language, nevertheless, might.

Our event will explore how we stumble, babble, and move through a world of missed connections.

No Words Work will feature:

- Songs performed by Alexis Molnar (Boyhoarder, Eric, Hot Knife)

- A lecture by poet and psychoanalyst Nuar Alsadir whose "Animal Joy" inspired this event

- A movement performance by psychoanalyst and dancer Julie Fotheringham in collaboration with musicians Melissa Grey and David Morneau. This piece leans into the realness of the body marked or missed by words—fleshy, tactile, imperfect, living, aging, making effort, breathing, out of breath, slowing down, aware of death, able to die.

- Performances by Ben Green and Ohad Mazor

- Dance piece by Justin Cabrillos

- "An Animal That Remembers You" - a 20-minute performance in which two dancers (Isabel Hunter and Ingrid Ferdinand) improvise in real time while poet, author and psychoanalyst-in-training Claire Donato reads a text written in response to their movement as it unfolds.