Touch causes the secretion of hormones: oxytocin (the so-called “love hormone”), serotonin and dopamine (“happiness neurotransmitters”), reduces stress, eliminates the feeling of social exclusion, calms the heart rate and blood pressure, provides a sense of security, comfort, pleasure. “SKIN HUNGER” - “hunger for touch” - is a term used by psychotherapists, defining the result of long-term lack of physical contact, leading to a loss of health: weakening of the immune system, sleep disorders, frustration, anxiety and depression.

Skin Hunger II is the “sister” or companion piece to Skin Hunger, a work originally developed with Polish Dancers to examine and investigate this phenomenon.  

Skin Hunger II, while developed using similar prompts, questions, and structures as its companion piece, reflects the context in which it was made and the people who collaborated in its creation. 

The physicist Arthur Zajonc remarked in a lecture I attended that “relationship is constitutive of everything: everything is in relationship to everything else” …this piece attempts to acknowledge and embody some small part of that.

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Gratitude to the dancers of Lux Boreal Compania de Danza, and Kamila…for your attention and generosity. Thanks Sierra for the technical support.

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Special thanks to Leslie Seiters and Jess Humphrey

Deep gratitude and love to my wife Kendra and my daughters Gabriela and Veronika.