Tongue Smell Color

Summary: Dr. Brenda Dixon Gottschild is Professor Emerita of dance studies at Temple University. She performs with her husband, choreographer Hellmut Gottschild, in a form of somatic and research-based collaboration that they have termed “movement theater discourse.” In going about her work as a cultural scholar/researcher, Dr. Dixon Gottschild uses performance—specifically, dance—as a measure and paradigm of society. She has published extensively on cultural activism, dance, and the African diaspora. Her monographs include Digging the Africanist Presence in American Performance: Dance and Other Contexts (Praeger, 1996), Waltzing in the Dark: African American Vaudeville and Race Politics in the Swing Era (Palgrave Macmillan, 1999), The Black Dancing Body: A Geography from Coon to Cool (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), and Joan Myers Brown and The Audacious Hope of the Black Ballerina: A Biohistory of American Performance (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). Hellmut Gottschild is a noted figure in Philadelphia dance. He cofounded Group Motion in Berlin in 1962 and, in 1968, relocated to Philadelphia, where he continued to work with Group Motion and received critical recognition by performing works such as Countdown for Orpheus at Judson Church in New York in 1968, performing at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in 1969, and joining the National Endowment for the Arts touring program in the 1970s. Gottschild then founded Zero Moving Dance Company in 1972, a leading modern dance company that performed throughout the Philadelphia region and toured in Europe. From 1968–96 he served on the dance faculty at Temple University. Currently, Gottschild performs with his wife, dancer/scholar/writer Dr. Brenda Dixon Gottschild, in a form of somatic and research-based collaboration for which they coined the term, "movement theater discourse.

Summary: Tongue Smell Color (2002) is a movement exploration of the implications of race, sex, and power. Using their own relationship as the foundation for the piece, Dr. Brenda Dixon Gottschild and Hellmut Gottschild examine their interracial relationship and the complex, layered histories embedded within their own experiences and embodiments of white man and Black woman. Citing important cultural touchstones from the infamous exploitation of Sara Baartman (the so-called "Venus Hottentot") to the media's treatment of tennis star Serena Williams, the pair grapple with popular culture and notions of exoticism and desire. They publicly contend with their private lives and the aporias of intimacy in their relationship—curiosity about the other, exoticizing one's own partner—in this powerful performance

Credits: Director: Dennis Diamond; Writer: Hellmut Gottschild

Credits: Brenda Dixon Gottschild; Hellmut Gottschild