What We Crave
A series of performance courses, from appetizer to libations.
Created & Performed by Jess Dobkin, Laurel Green, Joyce LeeAnn, and Shalon T. Webber-Heffernan
What possibilities exist at the intersection of gathering, archives, personal and collective histories, and our deepest cravings? What happens when we honour the complexities of our diverse experiences, including discomfort, joy, and vulnerability? How do archives perform, and what alchemy occurs when we connect across difference?
What We Crave explores the magic of gathering — celebrating coming together through experiments and rituals in embodied archival practices, emphasizing presence and sensory experience.
Invited by 7a*11d to create an opening night festival performance, I joined performance artist Jess Dobkin and collaborators Joyce LeeAnn Joseph and Shalon T. Webber-Heffernan — a.k.a. 3 Goddesses — to create What We Crave as an evolution of their Dinner Party Series, a multi-year project centring on hospitality, intimacy, and connection.
The performance was structured dramaturgically as a dinner service — a series of courses from appetizer to libations — disrupting the binaries between host and guest, performer and audience. Each of us hosted a course, fleshing out the actions and intentions in each section. Jess and I co-hosted a course designed to activate guests in moments of collective play and sharing: whispering messages around the table, eating apples and honey, crunching chips, taking photos of one another with gold cameras, singing together, and passing a ball of red yarn until everyone was intertwined. Joyce performed a burlesque number collecting guests' written cravings into her garters while a student volunteer played piano. We stood, still joined by red yarn, and launched a series of toasts — to the company, the evening, the season — before closing with a one-song dance party to Whitney Houston.
As creator and producer, the performance began with the invitation. Curating the guest list with the care of a seating chart, crafting emails that set the tone and asked guests what they craved, and incorporating those responses directly into the score — someone who wrote "the beach" found shells near their place setting, someone who wrote "chocolate cake" found a small cake — the gathering was built from the desires of the people it was for. 60 guests were seated at the table. Those who couldn't attend had their place cards moved to the fireplace mantle, where they joined our altar.
What We Crave ran for approximately 90 minutes, followed by another hour of dancing, mingling, and conversation. The next day we sent a final email of thanks, and received back messages of how the performance had been deeply felt. Joyce burnt the collected cravings in her cauldron. The performance was an ephemeral moment, fleeting, existing now in as an archive shaped by the memories of those who attended.
Performance
October 8, 2024—7a*11d International Performance Art Festival, Toronto, ON (By invitation only)
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"There’s the soft feeling of red weaving between my fingers—the long individual strand of yarn that connected all the guests seated at the gathering’s long dining table, ornately decorated with fruit and flowers. There’s the sharp bite of ginger candy in my mouth—one of many small treats on my plate that we were guided in eating by each of our four dinner hosts—and the ambling conversation with my tablemates, about the challenges of teaching and the pleasures of freshly washed sheets. There’s the quickening in my lungs as we unfurled small paper streamers, jumping and dancing and screaming to Whitney Houston to conclude the event. Earlier in the evening, we were asked to write our individual cravings down on small sheets of paper. I no longer recall what I shared, but I do remember how that table facilitated “craving” as a collective practice, a sensation built through being attentive to one another. The core demand of Houston’s karaoke classic—“I wanna dance with somebody!”—was the ideal finale of What We Crave as a gathering: the clear sounding of a desire for intimacy, for shared support, for catharsis, for desiring itself.
Support & Partners
Presented with support from Hemispheric Encounters & Hart House, University of Toronto
Special thanks to Sasa Rajsic, Panni Ajtony and Van Gonzales (Hart House), Laura Levin, Tracy Tidgwell, and student volunteers Sammi Herlich and Michelle Chimeddorj.
