Dolo and Arob fight through “Madam and Evening” the way one fights their way out of
a nightmare: they try to shoo away the baddies with grand gestures that quickly
exhaust themselves and falter into minute, impotent mimes of what it would be
like to truly exist in their surroundings (which include onion and saran wrap
curtains, a few rubber toy pigs, a hairdryer and beta fish hung from the
ceiling in not-your-average fishbowls). Arob beckons and questions, to no
avail, phantoms that go unseen by the audience; Dolo collapses gently to the
floor over and over again. Then they put Louis Armstrong on the record player,
a lampshade on the head, and partner-dance, indulging in a moment of decadent
unreality. This cycle of unnerved-strife-followed-by-slaphappy-moonraking
continues throughout the piece as Dolo and Arob try every available prop and
every motion to make sense of the strange world in which they’ve found
themselves.
Dolo’s
dancing is remarkable for any number of reasons, but the best part, the
subversion, is in her face. She’ll engage the ballerina lobotomy-face only to twitch suddenly into an expression
of deep anguish, or comic lust, or dumb curiosity. Not only is she flouting
dance protocol, which commonly demands anonymity from the neck up, but she’s
also working herself into a panic over a situation she might easily resign to
enjoying. It’s something we could all stand to do more often, and it’s why her
breaking out of the “CC bubble” to perform at the Fine Arts Center is more than
just geographically unusual. She’ll kick, she’ll scream, she’ll bathe in milk.
Let yourself get uncomfortable.
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