URBAN BUSH WOMEN
at the Dance Center of Columbia College October 26-28
Most of Lipstick is performed to spoken texts, and those texts become progressively more grim. To “Desire,” the dancers curl up passively on the floor, heads bowed, like Victorian maidens gazing into a brook while waiting to be discovered. “Rubio/Roman” tells a long, obscure story about a young teenager whose mother starts sleeping with a new man (“Rubio” is the generic name for any desired man in this dance). In “Vulva Operetta,” there’s some weird comic relief: the text describes a dream in which the word for sweater is “vulva.” So the dancers start saying things like “It’s hot in here, I think I’ll take my vulva off,” or “I think I left my vulva in the closet.” It’s just shocking enough to make you laugh, but it also makes you think about putting your sexuality on and taking it off, as you might lipstick or sexy clothes. By the end, the text–“Crayon Bondage”–is being recited in a voice that spirals higher and higher, squeaky with desperation like a little girl begging for what she knows she can’t have.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
She drops the apple, and suddenly she’s cradling an egg in her palm. She moves to a third spotlight center stage, places the egg on the floor, and dances to it. She has already kicked her heels off; the scarf that binds her hair comes off now. With her back to us again, she unbuttons and drops the dress, revealing in the dancing that follows the source of the danger: an unrestrainable, hard-edged sexuality. She turns to face us and we see, from the front this time and nearly unclothed, the movements that were so mysterious seen from behind and hidden under a coat. But what makes this woman dangerous also makes her vulnerable. At the close the dancer, in a ritualistic pose of sexual readiness, rises up, like a woman half roused from sleep, and calls someone’s name.
BALLET FOLKLORICO DE MEXICO
at the Auditorium Theatre October 27-29
