Come Again

The gay porn mag Honcho had a major influence on choreographer Jennifer Lacey's $Shot, at the Kitchen Wednesday through Sunday. "There's something about their photo-essays that's just amazingly inspired," says the 34-year-old New York native. "They take for granted that you want everything in the world to be sexually gratifying in some way."

This cognizance of porn and people's reaction to it is the topic of $Shot (the proverbial "money" or cum shot in porn videos). In underwear, white clogs, and woolly sweaters, Lacey and dancer Erin Cornell will explore "fetish, mucosity, the texture of flesh, puddles of fluid, and how to present a woman's vulnerable body without overtones of physiological distress." Though these conjure up eroticism, the hour-long dance is not pornographic in itself, according to Lacey. Unlike Honcho, her piece is "not designed to satisfy or gratify anybody's fantasy." It focuses on making spectators aware of their reaction to movement that mimics such erotic behavior. "For me, this piece is about how meaning is constructed. What's provocative or not is not my business."

Onstage, innovative composer Zeena Parkins will use "a table full of stuff as an instrument," says Lacey. The set by French artist Nadia Lauro consists in part of a blow-up plastic floor made of cushiony tubes filled not with air but, more appropriate, milky water. "It's quite low," says the choreographer, "and creates a strange, flat, liquidy surface."