dance #349, to be straight with you

Friday December 4, 2009

To be straight with you

9:15 p.m. DV8 performs at the Fleck Dance Theatre. Homophobia unleashed on stage. A dancing ethnographic record thick with the voices of people struggling to find ways to speak their hate, their pain, their hurt and loss. Sex and race and class and sexuality and religion tangled so tight there’s no breaking free. Such a powerful performance. The final scene a dancer speaks as a Muslim man torn between his homosexuality and his God. He raises his hands up, palms, fists, shaking. “It is between me and my God” he says, his head shaking with such intensity that there is a blur. He becomes Janus-faced, looking both directions simultaneously. His hands shaking with such intensity they paint the space around him in a blur of flesh against the blackening stage. Lights fall until all that is left is the blurred image of head and hands shaking. Caught in between. The day was cool, crisp. Cold settling in. There was no snow in Toronto this November. The first time in 162 years.

~ by nmyers on December 4, 2009.