Bowl Ballads, 1941). A very high-energy performance stirred implicitly by the dust storms of the Dirty Thirties, the men stomp, slam, bang and thump the matte non-skid floor. Eyes relax on their beautiful labor, as one considers for a moment whether the sweat emanating out of the deepest recesses of their hidden pores could give birth to oracles, or tell the future. Their bodies acting like some roadmap for the world–each line, muscle and curve- a demarcation, of some history, a truth—a trauma, some lie.
The fourth dance chronicles Lamentation Variations 2007, a September 11 commemorative. One girl is both handled and rescued by one man, then a second and a third; she is the embodiment of life, life about to be thrown, tossed and wrenched; she is a sacrifice by America to herself. The sequence gets so intense that tears rolled helplessly down one woman’s face. How the girl relaxed, melted so tremendously like butter in and out three men’s’ hands, I wonder. She must have had to trust them with all her might to let go like that—but there was no effort on her part; she was grief—grief was contagion–loose, careless and numb.
The combative soul, its strength resurfaces in the last act, as 8 elegant women shift in diagonal patterns and squares for Steps in the Street and Prelude to Action, 1936—a reaction to the rise of European fascism. Isolated, frigid and scared, the women cross their arms over their chests while shuffling, marching and gliding to an over riding fast tempo, one is left wondering if they were dodging bullets—war and emotional ones.
In the end, the warrior princesses aren’t even sure who or what is real, as they go into sporadic shock for having been laid down like marching somnambulists at the hands of a wicked government.
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