Stretched out paper-thin, some dough encloses the performer’s body. Like a second skin, it prompts sculptural images, tears, flies through the space, gets braided or rolled into little balls. What could wheat, that thing that started out as a wild grass only to be farmed into an omnipresent cultivated crop, have to do with our human reproduction? In She Does Dough, Dough Does Her, Jasmin Hoffer describes dough as a bridge from the present back to when humans became settled. Essentially starting from standardised, controlled, supervised reproduction, it goes all the way to the origins of civilisation, to the emergence of patriarchal structures, and to a domestication process that significantly changed the morphology and behaviour of animals, plants, and humans. One of Hoffer’s sources of inspiration was the baking hype that was partly sparked by the pandemic and is still present on social media: Baking as a means of forging identity. Baking as an anachronism, as a guilty pleasure, as a countermovement to industrialised dough production which uses enzymes and preservatives. Rolling out dough out of nostalgia. As a means of grasping and shaping the world, a haptic experience far from anything digital. Because it feels nice and because it tastes better.

Originally, She Does Dough, Dough Does Her was supposed to take place in a barn next to a wheat field. Due to an accident, the performance had to be postponed, and the wheat was harvested over the summer. This will be related in a video piece in the foyer of studio brut, in the presence some of the actual ears of wheat.

Jasmin Hoffer is a dancer, choreographer, and performance artist. She lives and works in Vienna. In 2014, she achieved her master’s degree in dance education in a contemporary context at the Cologne University of Music and Dance. Before that, she studied dance at the Scottish School of Contemporary Dance in Dundee and painting in the masterclass for painting at the Ortweinschule in Graz. In 2018, she received the Austrian Federal Chancellor’s Office’s START scholarship. Her performing and teaching took her to Germany, the United Kingdom, Norway, Italy, Palestine, and the United States. In varying constellations and formats, she works with artists such as Liv Schellander, Sara Lanner, Elena Kristofor, Oleg Soulimenko, and Alfredo Barsuglia. Her works have been presented at Tanzquartier Wien, brut Wien, and WUK performing arts.