Bacon Bits

Aside from some things I've seen in stage shows and on television, I think I’ve attended maybe one modern dance performance in my entire life. Until this month, when I saw three.

Two were last Saturday at On The Boards. Carlos invited me to join him for a double-bill show, and so far I’ve been pretty impressed with everything I’ve seen at OTB so I took him up on the offer.

The first performance was not very good. I spent the first 5?10?15? minutes (it felt like forever) trying to figure out what was going on, how I was supposed to feel, what the point/purpose was. There were two women dressed as stewardesses walking very slowly with two women dressed in white-blond mop top wigs, the latter also in lederhosen and walking on their knees. It wasn’t until one of the mop tops climbed onto a serving cart and started eating a gingerbread house that I made the Hansel & Gretel connection. Having the slightest clue about what was going on made it a bit better, and the witch who eventually appeared was kind of creepy-cool. But then it just got weird again. And boring. And lame.

During the intermission, everyone we talked with pretty much hated it. Oh well— I’d rather have a “bad” experience than no experience at all. Fortunately the second performance was much better. It was a local group called Locust, and they definitely had a more familiar, Capitol Hill-esque attitude and flair that everyone totally tapped into. There was a video element to their production that had everyone laughing, and the way they staged elements of the performance offstage was intriguing and effective. I was very impressed.

But even Locust paled in comparison to what I’d seen the previous weekend: Buttrock Suites II: Sweeter. Modern dance interpretations of heavy metal music. God was it good! And hysterical, like the opening number where the dancers emerged in slo-mo through a cloud of fog, all dressed in 80s rocker regalia, to the synth faux-horns opening of Europe’s pop-rock hit, “The Final Countdown.”

Not every number was played strictly for laughs. In fact, may favorite was the Joan Jett medley, with four female dancers dressed in ripped black clothing getting all sexy and sassy with each other and flashing their tits at the audience. I actually got chills at one point – it was that good! Or maybe that was just the $2 PBR they were encouraging the audience to consume. No, it was the performance. The crowd got really into it, for a dance performance anyway—whooping and cheering and holding lighters in the air during the medleys. Diana and Candace came with and they loved it too. Hope there’s a Buttrock Suites 3.

Looking forward to doing a lot of dancing myself at the Scissor Sisters show at the Paramount on Thursday! Josh rocks for scoring us sold-out tix for the 21+ dancefloor. Their show last year at Neumo’s was fun but that was before I had the album, which I now love, so this should be even better.