TURN ON is a full length dance production about female pleasure from the Swiss-Moroccan choreographer Soraya Leila Emery and featuring three female identifying performers from the SWANA region (South West Asia and North Africa) and based in Switzerland.

The performance, a continuation of Turn On - A Research On Pleasure, merging dance and grappling techniques, seeks to define pleasure and translate it into a choreographic score.

In TURN ON, Soraya Leila Emery explores female pleasure from a feminist perspective. Through movement, narratives around female sexuality, body autonomy and empowerment are re-imagined.

The three performers move through the space both alone and together, creating captivating tableaux vivants with their movements and gazes: intertwined and sliding over each other, their bodies vibrate, resist and soften in an obsessive search for endless repetition, leading to exhaustion and vibrating stillness.

A game of constantly changing, ambivalent power relations.
An act of re-appropriation of their bodies.
A fight for their rights to pleasure.

Pleasure manifesto

dreaming of pleasure
what is pleasure, where is pleasure
there is resistances in this quest of finding what pleasure is
but trying again and again to define what it is to have pleasure whilst having pleasure
pleasure, as a gravitational center, giving birth to every action, interaction, thoughts
arousing, touching, breathing, softening, resting, all in one
an individual and collective reclamation
radical/self/collective care, attentiveness, responsibility, consent, boundaries
pleasure as a work ethic and collaborative practice
pleasure at the service of the content
generosity, inviting the audience to contribute to our exploration
when needed, rest together and share what is pleasurable
always stretch the scope of pleasure - always

choreographers at work! 

The process of TURN ON has been documented as part of the documentary series Choreographers At Work! 

research