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ON ANN
LIV YOUNG'S "THE BAGWELL IN ME" AT IMPULSTANZ 09
By Katherina Zakravsky
In the
beginning there is an announcement by a guy with a blonde wig in a bath tub to
switch off the mobile phones. Then follows a long period of cheesy elevator
music while the “assistant/slave” (and real life partner) puts up a huge
American flag with the stars cut out. Hidden behind her apple laptop with only
a piece of a white wig visible, Ann Liv Young insults the audience in a voice
like from a 50ies horror movie. Discusses with a man in the audience if he
understands what is going on.
She emerges
from behind the computer, in a black leotard, skin painted dirty black, pubic
hair sticking out, and performs a rather intrusive variety dance in the
audience, at least three times due to technically induced problems. Meanwhile a
thin transvestite-dressed man, Kevin Wratten, with a Washington mask dances
wildly in the tub, splashing water and some strange red material all over the
floor, getting entangled in the white strands of the Las Vegas wardrobe style
curtains. This looks a lot like a “choreographic decision”, messy as it gets
over time.
Apples and pears?
The men get
naked for costume changes, Ann Liv Young changes into a worn looking fishnet
body stocking leaving her still white breasts hanging out. Washington and his
wife appear in monologues and dialogues being read from papers, indicated by a
change of wigs and a change between the ghastly deep horror-movie voice and a
Donald Duck voice, Ann Liv Young instructs the audience about the right
behaviour in case she might sit on their laps. She says that she has a weak
bladder, but in case a bit of urine might land on their laps, they should not
complain, there is worse. Maybe a powerful male white historical figure getting
his black female slave pregnant. But isn't this, in all its righteous moral
outrage, comparing apples and pears, historical fable and artistic annoyance?
The best
and most virtuous scene is next, starring the female impersonator playing the
fiddle and Ann Liv Young tap dancing to the all-time favourite “Billy Jean”,
ennobled by the artist's recent demise, yet clearly motivated by the plotline
(“The child is not my son” – a line that bears very different meanings
regarding slave holders' illegitimate offspring and Jackson's strange problems
to father children the “natural way”). Young delivers this paradigmatic “piece
of virtuosity” of African-American history with the glum expression of a
seasoned showgirl, while her impressive breasts bounce so happily and perfectly
in rhythm that I for one prefer that short bit of half amateurish, half
virtuous little tap performance to the male marathon of new tap dance
perfection that Savion Glover presented before at ImPulsTanz festival. Because
it outlines the gloomy heritage of that piece of dance history while Glover, or
at least the way he is perceived here, just whitewashes it with fake new
innocence.
So pink admidst the black
paint
Still
showing the expression of a professional stripper she spreads her legs,
presents her genitals in various positions – so pink amidst that black paint – and ends up lying on her back, fucking herself with two fingers precisely on
Jacko's unforgettable beat. That was indeed an unexpected way to prove her profound
sense of rhythm. But her later whining about leaving audience not respecting
her sacrifice of genital display put a sad puritan ring to this otherwise
enjoyable act. It was as if we had to be reminded all the time that what looked
like an outrageous variety of sexual acts and displays was in fact hard and
annoying work, putting a weight on every obscene gesture as if an old and spent
sex worker were shouting her final accusing insults at her ignorant audience.
But hey, there is more weight to it, sex actually refers to rape, and that rape
is a half fictitious piece of political history. Is the sexual material
supposed to pound the serious political matter into the hearts and underbellies
of the ignorant spectator? If so, I deeply despise even the mere intention. Is
Ann Liv Young the victim of the all American plague to “sell everything with
Sex”, even if it be a good, Leftist agenda of revealing the suppressed Racism
of the forefathers of American democracy?
The George
Washington tale is a gruesome, half private, half epic made up mishmash of sex,
violence and sentimentality that Ann Liv Young can only try to sell as the
backbone of her work. I wonder how this worked in the States, whether the
special juxtaposition of a huge, half torn American flag and domestic torture,
negotiation and castration in a pink wardrobe had the power to open up a fresh
wound. In Europe it rather holds true what my good old friend Karl had to say:
“I don't mind the breasts, the genitals and dildos, but that American flag was too
obscene for me.” A lot of the odd insults directed towards the auditorium
translated exactly that, one big “It does not translate” on a visceral level.
She shakes up any gender
role
Ann Liv
Young's performances do not really provoke or transgress any serious border.
But that is not a problem, I am rather sure that this is also not her
intention. And the props, the cross dressing, the campy interiors, the lip
synching, the karaoke singing, the very very Brechtian killing of dialogue with
distorted voices, reading from the paper bent over a desk? All state-of-the-art
performance tools. Often it shows that under the mask of a seemingly
transgressive, messy, outrageous act lies a rigorous formalist. And to me there
lies a far more serious and tricky problem than any mourning for transgression
lost. Ann Liv Young shakes up any gender role, any theatrical role for that
matter, to inhabit the space of “post-dramatic theatre”, only to insist on
re-establishing those very roles with her props and her forced linear story
line with the seriousness of children's puppet theatre. To carefully rebuild
classical story-telling and role-playing out of the very smithereens you just
blew them to is a weird and ambivalent gesture. Undoubtedly very contemporary
as well.
As early as
1964, Susan Sontag defined the aesthetic of camp with the serious, unironical
attitude towards the kitschy material one chooses to work with. Ann Liv Young
with her Pandemonion of all American trash, from Las Vegas obscenity to civil
war marches and flags, is clearly an heir of Sontag's camp. Her pieces are
without irony. And that is fine. But there is no reason why they should also be
without comedy, without fun. Maybe I picked a difficult show – actually I was
informed that I did, but still the emphasis on the hard and tedious work all
that pelvis grinding and karaoke singing and even the insults of the audience
really are, did not strike the right chord for me. I am not one of the
Masochist lot that seems to people the critical forums, one of those funny
(rather male) creatures who want to be truly disturbed, shaken, tortured and
insulted by the artist on stage to finally be pushed out of the cage of their
miserable cynical Bohemien existence – and who sometimes do not fail to mention
that Ann Liv Young's looks of a Southern princess, both sensuous and angelic,
make the punishment even sweeter.
Maybe I am
oldfashioned, but I do not wish to be disciplined by an act of performance. And
I do not expect an experience of violent redemption from it. I tend to read
Young's outbursts not so much as a Sado-Masochistic game but as signs of an
almost real desperation about the very success of her “style”. All too early
her work proved to be so very much in tune with the needs of contemporary
performance that she developed a “handwriting”. “Handwriting”, unfortunately
still a means of success in any art and trade, is a huge trap for productive
work. And it can seriously kill the fun. Ann Liv Young is not the only one who
suffers from a mild symptom of hype. But this does not have to be the end of
the story.
Links:
On Ann Liv
Young
http://www.artsjournal.com/foot/2008/10/performance_art_for_the_palin.html
http://countercritic.com/2008/10/04/the-cunt-in-me/
http://newyork.timeout.com/articles/dance/2108/pure-as-the-driven-snow
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/28/arts/dance/28kour.html
On tap
dance as part of a “race sensitive” US history
http://www.essortment.com/all/taptapdancing_rnzg.htm
Susan
Sontag: “Notes on Camp” (full text)
http://interglacial.com/~sburke/pub/prose/Susan_Sontag_-_Notes_on_Camp.html
(17.8.2009)
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