Sun 1 Feb 2009
The crew was asked to perform at the Henry Art Gallery’s fundraiser gala last night:
Even though we had just finished performing our hearts out at the Triple Door the previous night, the 7 of us still found the strength to don our glittery unitards and show up at an extremely fancy benefit party. Folks paid upwards of thousands of dollars for a seat at the Henry Art Gallery’s fancy ping pong tables (literally). The party was in a huge warehouse space, complete with gritty cement floors, and high beams. Two guys dressed up like bacon hovered around the dessert table. A decapitated trout perched high above near the ceiling. Screens flickered across the walls and an enormous panel of mirrors gracefully spun clockwise in a corner (see large pic below). The room was bathed in a weird orange light that my camera was only too happy to capture.
Despite a bruised toe from an accident while moving the $100,000 Steinway piano, sore feet from too-tight jazz shoes I once inherited from the Dance Closet, and the general aching ones body feels after performing two back to back shows the night prior, I still talked myself into wearing two inch silver heels with my glitter velvet unitard. The result was pretty overwhelming as I stalked my through the affluent crowd, my fist clamped around a cosmo I had acquired at one of the many open bars. Everywhere I went, I tried to keep one of the freedom dancers close by (safety in numbers), and people wouldn’t stop coming up to us. Everyone wanted to know what a pack of unitard-clad people were up to at this benefit. “We’re dancing,” we yelled over the huge marching band that had just precessed the crowd from dinner to the dance hall. “Are you some sort of troupe?” the women with the fur stole asked us. It got to the point where if I made eye contact with anyone for too long I would be descended upon. Sometimes I hid behind Josh–who had played his part and dressed up for the night as some sort of crazed, art collecting hipster, complete with his hideous mullet wig, shades, and jaunty scarf. (Interestingly enough, Josh got almost equal amount of attention).
While we waited to perform, waiters started showing up with the most incredible desserts: mini-cheesecakes, truffles, parfaits in tiny cups with tiny spoons. I tried as many desserts as I could possibly handle, stuffing what I couldn’t manage into Josh’s mouth while simultaneously snagging a new delicacy off the dessert tray. Josh said it was pretty fantastic watching all of us in our unitards stuffing ourselves with dessert while the majority of the buttoned up crowd watched us incredulously.
When our time came to dance, we had to hastily shed our shoes since the makeshift dance floor was as slick as a Seattle ice storm–despite the baby powder that had been dumped on it. Our dance number was executed so quickly that people came up to us for the rest of the night asking when we were going on? And WHAT? We already went? Are we going on again? It was at this point that several of the freedom dancers started officially drinking.
Several highlights were when I started messing with the video installation (jumping up and down in front of the video camera for Josh, who was recording the image on the wall in the next room with our own personal camera), changing out of my heels and into sneakers (creating a whole new look with my unitard), and watching a drunk woman approach Josh and ask if he was being taken care of drink-wise. I also enjoyed watching Joanna and her man dance all over the place, swinging, shaking, smooching and generally enjoying the hell out of each other. It was with a bit of a heavy, glittery, heart that we left at midnight. My body was slowly turning into a pumpkin–slack, exhausted, and a little bit chubby from all that dessert.