"Oh, do not look at me that way!"

"Am I boring you?"

No, not for a minute, Victoria Libertore...that is, er, Countess Erzsébet Báthory! And even if you were, I would be too terrified to say so.


Victoria Libertore in Girl Meat(photo: Paula Lobo)



In her theatrical solo Girl Meat at Dance New Amsterdam, writer-performer Libertore assumes the persona of the notorious Blood Countess, the 16th Century Hungarian noblewoman and military hero's wife accused of the physical abuse, sexual torture and murder of hundreds of young women and girls. Libertore's program notes tell us that Báthory got away with, yes, murder--roughly 650 times, mind you--only when she confined her activities to the poor and to young women in her employ. When she developed a taste for the lovelies in the aristocracy--"whom she invited to her castle for etiquette training"--things no longer went so well for her and for her co-conspirators.



There are two other interesting details. The countess's ultimate punishment was to be confined to a few bricked-up rooms in her favorite castle, where she died in 1614 and, "until recent interest unearthed her story, Báthory's infamous name was largely obliterated from historical record." But, thanks to Libertore, who stalks the intimately narrow space between two rows of audience, Báthory has returned from obscurity, from banishment, an unholy creature dredged from the darkest regions of the collective unconscious.



She's a small woman, Libertore. But you don't sense that at the outset--and not merely because we first see her standing astride a metal throne, her eggplant-colored velvet gown puffed out around her legs. Libertore's a skillful actress, commanding attention at once and never relinquishing it for the following hour-plus. Slowly raising a hand mirror towards her face, she draws it past her head then cocks it back like a club and holds it there just long enough to leave the impression that she will bring it down hard on the first one of us who gets out of line. 

And suddenly a voice sings out a sleazy, corrupted version of "Thank Heavens for Little Girls."



Libertore/Báthory slides the mirror across her curdled face, and she introduces herself by telling us what she has been called but is not (werewolf, tigress, vampire) and what she is (clearly a woman who's frightened of aging, although she certainly doesn't say so in those terms). She has a musical, vaguely Eastern European accent and a tone more confiding and insinuating than, for a woman of her station, haughty. With one or another lethal-looking metal object in hand, she will drift around and prowl the space, gliding close to us, recounting her history, telling stories in a narrative voice that readily slides from romance novel to soft porn to snuff film with alarming facility. Aside from gentle chuckles, the audience is pin-drop silent, completely in the snare of this slick and compelling, power-mad woman.



I was first introduced to Libertore's work in 2008 when she presented another solo piece, My Journey of Decay, at Dixon Place. She's a smart, gifted performer, confident in voice, timing, and movement in space, an actress with the wiliness of a shaman in the underworld and the surefootedness of a goat on a thin ledge.



Direction by Rosalie Purvis. With costumes by Jeff Sturdivant; scenic and prop design by Jono Lukas; and lighting by Amanda K. Ringger



Last chance to see Girl Meat: today at 3pm! Hurry! Click here for information and a brief video. For tickets, click here.

Dance New Amsterdam

280 Broadway, 2nd Floor, Manhattan

Entrance on Chambers Street

(directions)

212-227-9856