Korzo UP Kayva van Gangelen (Perforator)

“Sometimes your body tells stories your mind has long forgotten.”

Kayva van Gangelen is a passionate oboist, playful inventor, mother, and deeply wise soul. Once, she and her band s t a r g a z e recorded music for none other than Leonard Cohen. As part of Perforator, together with Akim Moiseenkov, she creates groundbreaking music theater. Soon she’ll perform her most personal work yet, LIJF, at Rewire X Korzo — a piece born from her exploration of how to listen again to the body’s subtle signals: through sound, sensors, and by training physical presence itself.

“If you Google ‘Perforator,’ all you get are ads for paper punchers…”
She laughs. “Perforator — the word has ‘performative’ in it! What we do is make electronic sound manipulation visible. You’ll never wonder, ‘Is that musician just checking their Instagram onstage?’ because you can actually see what everyone is doing.

In earlier performances, we built sound-producing balloons that the audience could toss around, and suddenly playfulness and wonder were everywhere. We also hacked a remote-control car so I could drive it using my oboe, and onstage, that little car delivered a letter from me to Akim. Totally impractical! Rest as the ultimate act of resistance? Yes! But for us, technology is always a means, never the goal.”

               “To be looked at, but not truly seen.”

“Our new piece, LIJF, is more serious and activist in tone. It began with my experience of living in a female body, a body that’s so often treated as an aesthetic object, something to be judged rather than inhabited. In the performance, I wear an oversized coat covered in pockets, each holding a small wireless speaker. When I open one of the pockets, a sensor triggers a sound sample. It begins with my heartbeat, something I can’t control, suddenly coming through the speakers.”

“And then my whole body starts to interfere with the performance.”

“But before I could make LIJF, there was another story that needed to be told, one about severe sexual boundary violations. That took courage, and I actually found that courage through becoming a mother. I began to feel awe for my body and to descend into it with gentleness instead of through the male gaze. Those stories, of women’s physical vulnerability but also the wild power of giving life, deserve to be heard much more often.”

How did you dive into these themes?
“I read Matrescence by Lucy Jones, about the transformation of motherhood — in the body, the identity, relationships, emotions, even the brain. And also The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk, about how the mind can forget trauma while the body remembers everything perfectly. We’re often so out of touch with our bodies; we’ve been taught to cut back on feeling.”

How do you reconnect with your own body?
“I start each morning sitting on the floor, touching my toes, massaging, tapping my body. What you give attention to, grows.”

That sounds manageable for a mother of a young child. Have you noticed a difference since doing it?
“Yes. I listen more closely, feel less stressed, and I’m eating less chocolate haha! But I’ve also done body-oriented trauma therapy, which connects to Bessel’s work. You do exercises to release trauma stored in the body, especially through the psoas muscle, sometimes called the muscle of the soul. Your nervous system basically resets.”
What does that feel like?
“You start trembling, you get emotional, and afterward you’re exhausted but also more whole.”

What do you hope LIJF will give the audience?
“I want people to feel that the body itself has a memory, that it holds stories and experiences we can’t always put into words. I hope the audience recognizes some of that vulnerability and strength within themselves.”

Perforator performs LIJF on November 21 during Rewire X Korzo, alongside Eli Keszler and Nadah El Shazly.