GOON

GOON
An event by P. Piton

Three performers use screens, dance, scent and taste to work themselves into a frenzy of pleasure. GOON by P. Piton explores how we experience, stage and pursue pleasure.

A computer on a stand, a phone in hand, endless images. If you look long enough, you enter a state somewhere between frenzy and trance. This is the state the three performers are looking for in GOON.

The title refers to “gooning”. This is the practice of delaying one’s pleasure in front of a screen for a very long time, often while watching pornographic content. People enter a kind of self-hypnosis: their eyes cross, their mouth becomes moist, their body trembles.

The stage resembles a cave full of screens. Pheromones and aphrodisiac sweets are laid out in abundance. The performers dance, sing and repeat their movements until perception blurs. Dances from TikTok and music videos, latex costumes, scents and food appeal to all the senses, including those of the audience. Just like delaying pleasure, the performance approaches its climax again and again without fully arriving. The promised release may never come.

In the process, real and performed pleasure, seriousness and exaggeration also blur. GOON moves beyond fixed ideas of gender and makes the dance itself the site of pleasure. With humour and a critical eye, the piece asks how we negotiate intimacy, media consumption and consent today.