"Running Up That Hill"--Kate Bush's lush pop hit from 1985--was an exquisite muddle. Ah, but then Justin Bond (Kiki of Kiki and Herb) laid claim to it, and then it really became something...something with definition...something with percolating, near-projectile rage. And now dancer Levi Gonzalez has seized upon Kiki's performance, and the resulting solo made the night at Dixon Place which is celebrating its 17th annual HOT! festival of queer culture.
Hard to know exactly what Gonzalez was mining for as he crept around in the dark on his hands and knees with a bright, sometimes pulsating light attached to his forehead--illuminating the shins in the front couches--and a red bike light somewhere to the rear of his crouched body. But he eventually made his way offstage--if you can call DP's living room performance space a stage--to the makeshift dressing room where, thanks to the lifted curtain, we spied on him carefully applying glittery fake eyelashes in an old mirror and listening to the Kate Bush original.
Miriam Wolf (who presented a dance-and-video piece on the Brink program) painstakingly secured Gonzalez to DP's back wall with several long strips of duct tape until he looked like a modern-day St. Sebastian. When Wolf set the last strip in place, he said "Thank you" in such a quiet, sweet voice that it startled some of us into a chuckle. He barely endured his restraints while lipsynching Kiki and Herb's recording. Only his head and face moved.
It doesn't hurt him. (Really?) But he's prepared to make a deal with God to switch places--with whom? God? An angry lover? A person of the opposite sex (which Bush has said is the true meaning of her song)? Freeing himself of the tape, he went on to take the measure of that hill; test the limits of the audience/performer divide, privacy and propriety; adjust antennae-like arms in search of a clear signal. But there ain't no tits on the radio--or, anyway, so say the Scissor Sisters.
There are dancers who dance. And then there are dancers who, no matter what they do, are recognizably and profoundly human; whatever they do pulls us in. Levi Gonzalez is one of these special ones.
Hard to know exactly what Gonzalez was mining for as he crept around in the dark on his hands and knees with a bright, sometimes pulsating light attached to his forehead--illuminating the shins in the front couches--and a red bike light somewhere to the rear of his crouched body. But he eventually made his way offstage--if you can call DP's living room performance space a stage--to the makeshift dressing room where, thanks to the lifted curtain, we spied on him carefully applying glittery fake eyelashes in an old mirror and listening to the Kate Bush original.
Miriam Wolf (who presented a dance-and-video piece on the Brink program) painstakingly secured Gonzalez to DP's back wall with several long strips of duct tape until he looked like a modern-day St. Sebastian. When Wolf set the last strip in place, he said "Thank you" in such a quiet, sweet voice that it startled some of us into a chuckle. He barely endured his restraints while lipsynching Kiki and Herb's recording. Only his head and face moved.
It doesn't hurt him. (Really?) But he's prepared to make a deal with God to switch places--with whom? God? An angry lover? A person of the opposite sex (which Bush has said is the true meaning of her song)? Freeing himself of the tape, he went on to take the measure of that hill; test the limits of the audience/performer divide, privacy and propriety; adjust antennae-like arms in search of a clear signal. But there ain't no tits on the radio--or, anyway, so say the Scissor Sisters.
There are dancers who dance. And then there are dancers who, no matter what they do, are recognizably and profoundly human; whatever they do pulls us in. Levi Gonzalez is one of these special ones.
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