How I use touch to tell stories — my work as an intimacy director

Lisa Petty began her dance career in 1980s New York, intoxicated by the grime and flamboyant life of the city. She witnessed countless friends lose their lives to AIDS, and the lessons she learned in closeness have stayed with her.

As a young woman, Lisa Petty was visiting her aunt in a retirement home when she started to speak to the older people there about the role of wartime dance halls in their lives.

These were stories of luminous intimacy.

The old men and women’s faces would light up as they remembered being close enough to attractive strangers to smell them, to move together with music, and to have a few hours reprieve from the stress of war.

These stories inspired Lisa’s masters studies and she moved to New York to pursue a career in dance.

There, she found a friend soulmate in a man called Raymond, and they lived together for several years, before and after he became sick with AIDS.

After Lisa returned to Melbourne, she left her dance career behind and began working as an intimacy and movement director, helping performers to channel their character’s energy and translate that into the language of touch.

Further information

This episode was produced by Alice Moldovan. Conversations' Executive Producer is Nicola Harrison.

It covers topics including intimacy, touch, single mum, AIDS, New York, Kaposi sarcoma, dance, intimacy co-ordinator, movement coach, theatre.

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