Dance / Karla Shacklock
Niplash: Karla Shacklock presents ‘a lactivist call to arms’
Karla Shacklock is a Bristol-based dance artist and performer with a focus on autobiographical and devised ensemble work.
“My long-term ongoing research focuses on truth, authenticity, liveness, transformation and self in performance and how we can share real lived experiences with audiences in a way that is meaningful, emotional and immersive”, she says.
“I make work only if I have something to say.”
Karla Shacklock – photo: courtesy of the artist
Her latest production, Niplash is an exemplar of Shacklock’s approach as a creative. As a mother of three who has breastfed all her children, she summarises the project as “a highly physical and visual lactivist call to arms”.
Citing Unicef statistics that only 1 per cent of women in the UK are exclusively breastfeeding when their babies reach six months, Shacklock notes that this is the lowest rate in the world. And yet “out of the mums who stop in the first six weeks, 80 per cent were not ready to do so”, she goes on to point out. “I feel deeply that things need to change.”
Karla Shacklock performing Niplash – photo: South West Theatre Photography
This was the impetus for Niplash: a part-memoir, part analytical exploration of what Shacklock calls “the cultural and societal pressures and mixed messaging around infant feeding”.
In two separate takeovers of The Mount Without on February 28 and March 1, she is planning to showcase her own dance performance, complemented by a guest appearance from Bristol’s Bring Your Own Baby (BYOB) Choir, an art installation by Amy Thornley, LACTIVIST flag workshops, a feeding donation bank and an afterparty.
Photo: South West Theatre Photography
“Niplash is for the mum who was spat at for feeding her baby in the street”, she says; “the mum told to put her tits away in a café, the mum scorned for feeding a baby with different skin colour to her own, the plus size mum so ashamed and embarrassed she only fed her baby with the curtains closed at home. Niplash is for all the mums. Whatever their choices or non-choices. Whatever their journey.”
Shacklock is clear that the production is free from judgement, instead providing an opportunity for mothers to share their own widespread experiences. “Niplash is a show that explores how we feed our children; this includes breast, chest and formula milk feeding”, she explains. “The show does not place one form of feeding above another and seeks to acknowledge the myriad of experiences and complex journeys.”
View this post on Instagram
Niplash is at The Mount Without on February 28 at 7.30pm and March 1 at 1pm. Tickets are available at www.headfirstbristol.co.uk. Follow @shacklockkarla for event updates.
The event is programmed as part of This Body, a new festival of dance from Impermanence, running at The Mount Without from February 25-March 8. More information and tickets are available at www.impermanence.co.uk.
Main photo: Karla Shacklock
Read next:
Our newsletters emailed directly to you
