Tongue PhD

If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t want To Be Part Of Your Revolution and Veem House for Performance proudly present the Dutch premiere of the solo piece Tongue PhD by New York based artist Ieva Misevičiūtė. 

Ieva Misevičiūtė, Master in Political Science, Master in Cultural Analysis, will finally get her PhD, in one hour, right in front of you, granted by her tongue! The tongue bares the memory of the animal, the instinctual, but also is the main tool with which we express our humanness. It is a bridge between madness and intelligence. It’s a perfect place to get your PhD at! 

The piece consists of ten chapters each investigating a different metaphoric lens of the tongue. Tongue PhD fuses elements of physical theater, academic reverie, dance, and sexual slapstic. A pink set with no straight lines will soon transport you to the most potent cavity where theory and rhythmic, animalistic loops mingle on equal footings. Long live muscle moving muscle!

The performance is developed in the frame of the Corpus international network. Its European premiere took place at Playground festival in Leuven in the autumn of 2015, and the US premiere took place at The Kitchen. The piece was shown as well in CAC Vilnius in 2016. 

“Misevičiūtė’s acts distort social characters and behaviours by imbuing them with animality, existential contortions, philosophical slapstick, and hallucinogenic cleverness.” – Natalia Valencia, 10 Up and Coming Artists From The Americas, Crash. 

“Ieva Misevičiūtė’s quirkily unplacable blend of performance, circus, and dance, pleasing, sharp, and funny (…)” Catherine Wood, The Year in Performance, Best of 2015, Artforum.

Tongue PhD is commissioned and produced by Contemporary Art Centre (Vilnius) and co-produced by Playground (STUK Kunstencentrum & M-Museum, Leuven) as part of Corpus, network for performance practice. Corpus is Bulegoa z/b (Bilbao), CAC (Vilnius), KW (Berlin), If I Can’t Dance (Amsterdam), Playground (STUK & M, Leuven), and Tate Modern (London).