Can you break free from discomfort and shame around physical pleasure? Melyn Chow explores this with Shaking Shame: an intimate, physical performance that examines the connection between shame, pleasure and liberation.

Shaking shame puts you in the middle of a landscape of shaking, distorting bodies. Sacred and promiscuous, playful and dangerous. With the audience’s eyes on them, five performers attempt to transform shame and awareness of their bodies into a powerful, liberating movement in which the boundaries between the sensual, sexual and mundane slowly blur.

Shame is inexorably linked to our relationship to others: what opinions, projections or internalised judgments might someone have about you? In the audience’s presence, the players try to shake off these projections and the shame that flows from them to make room for a more sincere exchange with each other.

Winner VSCD Mime/Performance Prize 2025

credits

CONCEPT & DIRECTION Melyn Chow  PERFORMERS Melyn Chow, Estela Canal, Rita Bifulco, Sjaid Foncé, Ashley Ho PERFORMERS 2021/2022 EDITION Laura Boser, Elliot Dehaspe, Tashi Iwaoka  LIGHT DESIGN Minna Tiikkainen  SCENOGRAPHY Lena Michel van Drie SOUND DESIGN  Maoyi Qiu  DRAMATURGY Renée Copraij  MENTOR AND ADVISER Floor van Leeuwen  VOICE AND SPACE HOLDER Leela May Stokholm  GRATITUDE AND LOVE TO Audre Lorde, Sarah Ringoet, Jela Nieuwstraten, Merette van Hijfte, Jing Hong Okorn-Kuo, Marijn de Langen, Kim Zeevalk, Mime Opleiding