Sometimes the Sex is so Good is a provocative dance-theatre piece (that isn't about the sex at all)

Woven into Toronto-based choreographer Tavia Christina's work is what they describe as "decaying intimacy." Sometimes the Sex is so Good is the latest dance work from Christina, following the tale of comfort in complacency. 

"It plays off that tension when nothing's working anymore, and when we're surrounded by ruin," they say. "That's when we most honestly need connection or touch … it's about existing with one another through the messiness and perhaps even because of it." 

The show is set to run from June 24 to 26 at the Young People's Theatre through performing arts group DanceWorks' Sweet Ephemera series. The idea behind Christina's dance-theatre piece, and the name itself, comes from conversations they'd had with themselves about how they'd stayed in relationships, even when things were clearly bad. 

"For solace, I voice recorded myself talking through thoughts that I was having, and during one of them, I asked myself, 'I'm staying [in this relationship] because the sex is so good,'" they said. 

Christina says that as they thought about it more, they realized that romantic relationships weren't the only situation where people chose to ignore things falling apart around them and focused on the small areas that were still working. We do it all the time. The concept of Sometimes the Sex is so Good became a larger metaphor and a question of how natural it is for people to get stuck in toxic patterns because they're comfortable. 

Through the characters The Beast, played by Katie Adams-Gossage, and The Being, played by Eleanor van Veen, viewers are asked to question their own behaviour in comfort.

The Beast and The Being represent conscious and unconscious ways of living, respectively.  They live together in an underground safe haven, away from the post-apocalyptic world outside. Through Christina's choreography, we see the conscious and unconscious literally dance with each other.

"You can take it from a larger lens," they say. "Why is it that, as a society, we are subscribing to capitalism? Can we deviate from that? Is this a conscious act, or are we all subconsciously subscribing to this because it's being placed on us?"

The costumes, designed by Angela Cabrera, extend the metaphor: the conscious Beast has a woven spine growing on its back with wounds, while the unconscious Being wears wired armour. 

Early on in the creation process, Christina was able to bring the dancers to The Woodland Farm Residency on Salt Spring Island, B.C. Working in tandem with the land, Christina and the dancers were able to explore movement influenced by both limited spaces and the nature they were surrounded by. 

"I was interested in seeing and working in space that was outside," they say. "I wanted the dancers to [question], 'what do we see here that's beautiful and how do we turn it on its head?'"

Christina kept both audio recordings and journals of their thoughts during that trip to Salt Spring. When production began, they decided to share their writings with the dancers and production team. 

"I work through a somatic lens or improvisation," they say. "It often comes down to task-based styles that then refines itself to set choreography. I would take these thoughts and these themes to my dancers, and I would ask them to interpret them physically."

Christina created a production environment that embodied one of the key ideas of the piece: intimacy and how we latch on to it, fall into it, or dig ourselves out of it. By having an improvisational approach that encouraged dancers to bring their own ideas to the table, they allowed intimacy to be at the core of this piece. 

Ultimately, Christina hopes that their word will get audiences to question where they might be choosing comfort and complacency rather than action and change in the face of things decaying around them.

"It's important that artists are trying to prompt our audiences to act more," they say. "We watch things every day that put [us] in disbelief, whether it's the genocides or ongoing wars … what we're seeing affects us and can lean into our art as well."

Sometimes the Sex is so Good runs until June 26 at Young People's Theatre (165 Front St. E.) in Toronto.