HOT! HOT! HOT!

Quickie notes on more Dixon Place HOT! Festival doings (from last night's show):

Saul Ulerio (Rapt--Extinction of the Self): Described by Ulerio as "an impressionistic exploration of truth, freedom & death," which sounds like something out of teenage poetry and sometimes looks that way, too. However, Ulerio is a disciplined mover and a serious imagist. I trust that his ambition will move him towards increasing clarity of purpose and execution. He's already got the courage.

Mathew Heggem (Compelled to Inhale): Oddly enough, this is perhaps the first time I've actually said to myself, "Whoa! This dance is way too big for Dixon Place!" And I don't mean just because a couple of propulsive dancers kept slamming into the clip lights. I mean because deliciously gender-bent testosterone--or something--made everything about the performances seem magnified and propelled. Every time I hear someone talk about Heggem--or I talk about him myself--words like "one to watch" come out. And let's hope he keeps Wendell Cooper in his orbit. Cooper performed the slammin' vogue number that brought the house down. Another "one to keep an eye on."

Victoria Libertore (My Journey of Decay): Since this is My Summer of Dental Work (notice the braces, everyone? :-#), and I'm intent on making braces sexy, I'm totally in step with Libertore. Her work as a performance artist is new to me. She came highly recommended by a dance friend who said, "I don't know if she's doing burlesque in this new piece, but she does really intelligent burlesque." Well, My Journey of Decay is decidely not burlesque--although Libertore does, at one point, face temptation to take it off, take it all off. However, it is a striptease of the soul, revealing things that any woman in this youth-and-looks-and-normalcy-obsessed culture would normally shudder to divulge. Good on her. Performance art as a collage of experience, thoughts and complex feelings with a sense of hardwon knowingness and comfort within one's body and within one's space--that's Libertore's My Journey of Decay. And her slouch-hatted easing into Citizen Cope's "Sideways" --"These feelings won't go away/They've been knockin' me sideways"--knocked me sideways.