DANCING WITH PEOPLE FROM MY BRAIN
It’s not so much that Frasz tells us anything new as that she finds fresh ways of telling old stories. Eggs (1988) is about a love triangle. It begins with Frasz reciting Woody Allen’s quip about his crazy brother who thinks he’s a chicken: the family would like to put him away but they can’t do without the eggs. And so it is with relationships, we need the eggs. The story is ancient–there’s a woman about to be abandoned (Frasz), a two-timing man (Lesley Jones), and a young interloper (Jill Sarmento)–but Frasz illuminates the humor in it with deft, unexpected physical details. The dance is set to tango music, and the dancers’ gestures are often histrionic, hackneyed, archly noble in set tableaux. At other times the performers behave shamelessly. When the younger woman sits astride the man, who’s lying on his back, we see his forearms shoot out and vibrate, fingers splayed, as if he’s been hit by lightning; when the older woman mounts him in the same way he drums the floor with his fingertips. Moments later Frasz’s deadpan stare at the audience completes the joke.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Though Calling All Catholics ends a little sentimentally, that vein doesn’t run throughout Frasz’s work: consider the astringent, surreal Circus (1988), a solo for Frasz to six poems by Netta Gillespie. The structure is readily perceptible–Frasz dances each poem in a separate spotlit area, the spots moving to the rear of the stage and then back downstage, and she gradually removes articles of her vibrant ringmaster’s costume until she’s stripped down to a black bra and underpants. The poems, read by Christine Veach in a deep, suggestive voice with plenty of erotic undertones, seem to draw an analogy between a circus star’s waning powers and death (though I’m sure there are nuances and complexities I missed). Meanwhile a recording of circus music plays softly behind the voice, winding down during the fifth poem as if the turntable were slipping.
