Gesel Mason's 'Women, Sex and Desire' Makes Its World Premiere

Mt. Ranier, Md., based choreographer Gesel Mason has a history of making intriguing, challenging and provocative works. Recently this alum of the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange spent time in the trenches interviewing women of all ages, ethnicities, backgrounds and faiths about some of their most intimate and personal experiences. Over the past three years this community-based work -- focus groups, meetings with aHIPS (Helping Individual Prostitutes Survive) workshops with teenaged girls -- has evolved into an evening-length commission, "Women, Sex and Desire: Sometimes You Feel Like a Ho, Sometimes You Don't." Notwithstanding the title, the work attempts to dig deep. I spoke with Gesel for a piece that appears in The Washington Post Weekend section.