My Fair Lazy: One Reality Television Addict's Attempt to Discover if Not Being a Dumb Ass Is the New Black, or a Culture-Up Manifesto (4 page)

During a particularly stirring piece, I turn to her and say, “Before I started watching this show, it never occurred to me that you could actually tell a story through dance. Like, who knew dance could make you
feel
something?”

Stacey gives me the kind of endearing, indulgent smile reserved for kittens and children taking their first steps. Since she possesses a master’s degree in an arts-related field and was the educational director at the Goodman Theatre for seven years, I guess Stacey might already be familiar with the power of art. “Listen,” she says, “if you like dance that tells a story, I can get us tickets for Marta Carrasco.”

“What’s that?”

“Marta’s a who, not a what, and she’s the leader of a very cool Spanish dance troupe that does really artistic pieces. I’ve seen her a few times at the Goodman and she’s amazing.”

“Neat! I’m totally in.”

We finish watching the show, and at my insistence, view some quality Flavor Flav-based programming on VH1.
³⁴
I finally retire to the guest room for the evening, where I watch an iPod Touch episode of
Living Lohan
before falling asleep and dreaming that Bret Michaels and I win
Dancing with the Stars
.

Stacey and I go out for pancakes in the morning. When I note that my breakfast probably would be better topped with a bacon-maple butter compound, she smirks in response.

I totally love when they do Latin dances on
So You Think You Can Dance
, and I’m all excited to see what I imagine are a bunch of flamenco dancers with all the flounce-y shirts and castanets and eyeliner. Stacey used to work here and still knows everyone, and since we have time before the curtain rises, she takes me around to meet important people.

All of the Important People gush about how wonderful Marta Carrasco is, which piques my interest. And, frankly, my curiosity, because each of them mentions we might not want to sit in the first few rows. As soon as the production designer we’re talking to steps out of earshot to eat a quick dinner
³⁵
before the show, I ask Stacey, “Why do they keep saying stuff about splash zones? Is this going to turn into a Gallagher show complete with sledgehammers and watermelons?”

Part of Stacey’s old job was to teach local gang members to appreciate the Bard, so her patience level is infinite, and this isn’t the dumbest question she’s ever been asked.
³⁶
“No, I’m sure it has more to do with sight lines. My guess is we don’t want to be too close so we can take in all the action on the stage.” I’m glad for the warning because I’ll surely be uncomfortable if I can see the dancers’ underpants.

We find some seats toward the back, and as my eyes adjust to the light, I take in the detail on the elaborate set. The backdrop is kind of fascinating—on the far wall, there are dozens of antique white garments hung from ropes at various angles, including a straitjacket. Staircases lead to a platform midstage with lots of little doors built into it.

Four old, crooked bookcases are spotlit at the front of the stage, and they’re filled with a variety of items, like inflated latex hands and sparkly shoes and Kewpie doll heads. They take on a sinister quality grouped together like that. Honestly? The set kind of reminds me of my grandmother’s attic. She lived in a creepy old house, and because she lived through the Depression, she tended to keep everything she got her hands on, and I mean
everything
. As soon as I took my first psych class in college, I diagnosed her with a hoarding disorder, but my mother said I was being ridiculous. Yes, because it’s perfectly normal to keep three broken fridges in the kitchen for thirty years. My bad.

The accumulated junk in my grandparents’ house wasn’t what made the attic so eerie, though—it was the perfectly preserved, neatly wallpapered bedroom up there in the middle of all the chaos of forgotten possessions. I once asked my noni if she ever kept hostages up there, but she told me I was being fresh.
³⁷

Anyway, I feel like these are odd surroundings in which to showcase flamenco dancing, but what do I know? The lights in the theater go down, the audience politely applauds, and then the show starts. The bookcases slowly part and a pretty woman slides onto the stage on a rolly chair with a rolly desk, and we watch her smoke an entire cigarette.
³⁸
She doesn’t dance; she just smokes.

Then other people in vintage outfits crawl onto the stage, except for one lady who’s toting an IV pole. When IV Lady squeezes her bag of saline, it laughs.

No one dances.

The sound track is some French song that gets louder and faster and includes the sound of puppies yelping. I lean into Stacey and whisper, “Boy, if Loki were here, he’d be having a fit!”

As the music gets louder, the smoking lady begins to twirl in her rolly chair and her rolly desk. Someone gets slapped, but no one dances.

A man enters stage right in a tutu, which is promising for dancing, and a scrunched-up baby mask, which is not. Someone slaps him, and then there’s a whole bunch of shouting in Spanish. Everyone in the audience laughs, except for those of us who thought it would be
très amusante
to take French in high school.

A woman then comes out with her head in a grandfather clock and sways back and forth.

The swaying is the closest we’ve come so far to dancing.

I’m beginning to suspect I’m not going to see any flamenco tonight.

More puppies yelp while two shirtless guys fly onstage with some woman in a ball gown. She gets thrown back and forth between them. Then a different girl in a
Mad Men
-looking dress enters stage left. She begins to shout in Spanish, and I lean into Stacey, saying, “Seriously, if I wanted to hear people yell in Spanish, I could have just stayed in my living room and opened the windows.”

After she finishes shouting, the whole audience laughs except for me. Apparently she said something hilarious, but I have no idea what. Stacey’s Spanish is a bit less rudimentary than mine, and she says she thinks the woman was reading a recipe.

Yes. Because that makes perfect sense.

A different woman comes out in a ball gown and a gas mask and drops rubber babies out of her dress as she slowly walks by. The tutu baby man then picks up the babies and slaps them.

There’s still no dancing.

A giant Velcro mattress is wheeled out and placed in a vertical position in the center of the stage. A lady in Velcro pajamas throws herself at it for a while. Every time she hits it, her hair fans out, and it looks like she’s been electrocuted. This is my favorite part so far.

Tutu Baby Man revisits the stage and shouts more
³⁹
while a couple of guys in pajama bottoms at the front of the stage yank another woman’s shirt down and begin to slap all her naked bits.

Have I mentioned the no-dancing part yet?

And why was I not warned there would be nudity?

In my peripheral vision, I see Stacey stifling her laugher because she knows I’m so prudish that I actually spell out words that are even vaguely sexual. She catches my eye and mouths, “I’m so sorry. I had no idea!”

Then Marta, the lead dancer, comes out wearing a circus-tent-sized shirtdress. She strips from the waist up and begins to make out with a statue for a while.

Like, a long while.

Then the whole stage is covered with an enormous sheet of dry-cleaning film, and Marta and her naked self writhe against it for a very long, naked while. She almost dances but is likely too busy being naked and trying not to suffocate when she breathes in the film.

I guess this is why they put all those warnings on the plastic.

Then the entire ensemble assembles onstage with giant plates of watermelon,
⁴⁰
and they spit chunks of it into the air and at the audience. They pour water all over themselves and swim around on the wet, watermelon-y floor.

And then it is over.

With no goddamned dancing whatsoever.

The audience goes batshit crazy with applause and gives the “dancers” an extra-long standing ovation while I try to make sense of what the hell I just saw.

As soon as everyone finally finishes applauding, I turn to Stacey and say, “You realize this is exactly why my side keeps cutting funding to the arts. And by the way, I totally called the watermelon.”

Later we find out that Marta Carrasco and company were retiring certain pieces and that what we saw was essentially a medley of her previous work. Stacey tells me, “By cutting them up and mixing them around, the continuity was lost, as was most of the dancing. In the original context, you’d have seen that the smoking and desk spinning in the beginning was her interpretation of losing a job and having nothing but time on her hands.”

I nod. “Now
that
I’d understand. When I got laid off, I remember I’d sit in my desk chair and spin and spin when I was trying to think.”

“Exactly. And I give you props for not leaving the moment the first n-i-p-p-l-e made its Goodman Theatre debut,” she adds.

“You know what’s funny? Even though I had no frigging clue what any of the performance meant, I like having had the privilege of getting a glimpse into an artist’s mind. I mean, what I saw was disturbing and dark—”

“And watermelon-y.”

“And watermelon-y,” I agree, “but the experience wasn’t without value, you know? Like, my world is a tiny bit bigger for having seen that.”

Stacey seems pleased. “That’s what I always used to try to get my students to see. The value in a performance like that isn’t understanding every nuance the artist implies. It’s the interpretation and feelings
you
get from it.”

“Well, mostly I ended up thinking I wasn’t in on the joke. But there’s a part of me that feels like I learned something from the performance, even if it’s how to fight my way out of a giant dry-cleaning bag.”

Seriously, something about this performance yanked off the big white dustcover that’s been protecting the critical thinking part of my brain. There were no producers here to explain every little nuance of the action via a single-camera confessional, and it was up to me to interpret what I saw. I had to
engage
.

Intellectually, I sort of feel like I did the first time I ran on the treadmill. Most of my body was screaming no . . . but a tiny part of me shouted yes.

from the desk of the logan square - bucktown neighborhood association
⁴¹

Dear Neighbor,

Remember this weekend when you idled right outside my bedroom window? And you played shitty house music as loud as your fifteen-year-old Buick’s radio would allow? With your bass turned up so high my fillings rattled? For, like, twenty minutes? At 3:00 a.m.? And when I went outside to glower at you, all you did was move two spaces up? Remember that?

No?

Too bad.

Because that’d go a long way in explaining why I was organizing my purse right beneath your open bedroom window late last night, playing Natasha Bedingfield as loud as my Harman Kardon speakers would allow.