Wet Spots: The Story Project
Eco-Cottages Venice Beach, CA
May 30-31, 2008
Conceived and Directed by Christine Suarez
Choreography by Suarez in collaboration with the performers Caitlin Brewer, Kai Hazelwood, Bonnie Lavin, Pat Payne, April Rose, Waewdao Sirisook, Lailye Weidman and Meg Wolfe
Original Music and Sound Score by Joel Stein
Lighting Design by Tony Mulanix
Costume Design by Doug Spesert
Music performed by Rachel Sexton (cello) and Alison Spieth (viola)
Orgasmic Tours led by Rebecca Lowman, Mark Rizzo and Cari Ann Shim Sham
A smattering of finely curled pubic hair lie outside the confines of a moist, wine berry lace panty, scantily covering what appears to be a vagina. So subtle in its wetness, one really has to commit to looking closely to see for sure if it is actually wet. Yes, I confirm. The vagina is wet! -This is the publicity image used to sell Wet Spots: The Story Project, a contemporary dance installation/site specific performance at the Eco-Cottages in Venice, CA.
Christine Suarez, creator/director/choreographer, presents various ‘orgasmic portraits’, vignettes if you will, in the tiny spaces inside and between the cottages. From the pubic hair on the PR photo to the eco(logy)(nomy)-ness of the bohemian Venice city cottages, this seminal work by Suarez challenges convention and provides a clear frame for her taboo content: the female orgasm.
According to Suarez it’s really quite simple. Clitoral/Vaginal pleasure is not too difficult to master, especially if you have the right training. Unfortunately, in Western culture the female orgasm has been subjugated by and through a convoluted history of Victorian education that has shamed young women into believing the consequences of pleasure would result in the unbearable burden of being an unwed mother, a self-pleasuring heathen, or dare I say someone who selfishly thinks of her own pleasure before her man’s. Cross-cultural mediated representations of the vagina are unimaginably complex, wrapped in so many metaphorical purities that any mention, exposing, touching or auto-eroticization of one is wrought with immediate guilt. Boys get to gyrate anything left and right growing up and it is considered cool with the other boys, even with dads. I am not sure I know many moms that sit their daughters down with vibrators (or fingers) and say, “now honey, you want to put the tip in just like so, then draw the shaft up close to the head of your happy hood…now twiddle.” Just fucking sad, if you will. I am not sure many young women know it is even possible to have such unabashedly wicked pleasure between their legs. Imagine if Barbie had that type of hooded knob. There could be a button to push that would release (after some time) a sugary crème to flow down one leg, or into her wine berry lace panty.
(This next sentence is in no way related to the previous)
I just brushed against my penis a second ago…probably the reason why this review is taking so disastrously long. But that is neither here nor there.
So what are we about to see? I heard there are no masturbatory acts. That’s unfortunate.
We are introduced to Mark Rizzo, our tour guide for the performance. And of course he has to be cute.
I can’t but wonder if he is a mo. Everyone’s gay in my world…they all just don’t know it yet.
He lays out the game plan and rules. I am told to leave my pretentious Starbucks coffee behind.
He’s not gay.
Other than that his humor gets us all on board, and from everyone’s expression (there are 5 of us) I can tell the group is fresh and hip, eager for some clitoral investigation.
The first cottage is quaint, painted in baby blue and white, and accented with red furniture. It is described by Saskia Vogel as a “modern take on your first generation Hungarian grandmother’s summer cottage in Montauk.” … Oh, and also includes state of the art stainless steel kitchen appliances.
We are told to take a seat.
Beside me sits Sara Wolf, long time dance critique of the LA weekly, who is vigorously taking notes during the performance.
I feel a little intimidated. Should I be taking notes, I say to myself. I grip my seat. Or maybe better yet, I am flexing my butt. I feel that I need to pay close attention to everything so that I will remember all of the fussy details when I go home to write about the work. Five minutes have passed and I don’t think I have blinked at all. I am not sure I am cut out for this dance writing stuff. I feel the pressure.
The performance begins with a solo by Lailye Weidman… Sitting with her back to us in a gorgeous red antique birdcage chair, (yes, it really is all of these things) she looks at us through a hand held mirror that is fixed to the cage. We see only her eye, as it blinks nervously. Her head, leading with the top of her forehead, circles a number of times. Her eye keeps contact with the mirror, which in turn, keeps contact with us.
A few questions arise.
Is she challenging the male gaze? She is aware that we are looking at her, yet she is doing everything she can to keep us vexed on the parts of her body she wants us to look at; mainly her eye.
Is this isolation about notions of being trapped, lonely, shame and what it means to be unsuccessfully wet? She does not seem to be getting off. Perhaps this notion of being on display is meant to theorize the female orgasm as a scrutinized, minstrel-like pornography that appeals only to a paying patron-type…as only whores and skanks touch themselves or talk about their privacies?The sound of birds ruffling their wings repeats in between ambient sounds, projecting out of a hidden sound system. The lights above the couch are warming my senses.
She continues to play with her focus, now inching the cage around its axis. It makes a wonderful clinking sound, like a chain on an old bicycle or like an old fashion kaleidoscope. She brushes her fingers across the metal bars of the cage, which also creates a distinct sound that conjures a plethora of memories. She is no bird, though her short cropped hair and ornate white dress could be read as a deliberate personification of some sorts. She stares at us with intensity, fixating on our position in the room.
I question my position in the room. I am nervous that the work will dissolve into a pity party for this sad woman who can’t have an orgasm, as though I am being asked to watch this woman who has a history of being subjugated, chained to her repressed desires as a woman, unable to achieve self-sexual liberation. Or, am I not asked to do anything but watch this androgynous beauty waft her odorous armpits in my face? Or, am I to think about all of the orgasms I have had as a man and wonder, what’s the effin deal? I am not sure. But then I tell myself to shut the fuck up and pay attention to something other than my neurosis.
This is foreplay: the longing, looking, voyeuristic and playful twiddling of the delicates. She steps out of the cage with specific toe-ography, gently finding the floor. She slowly approaches us. Her hands float around the frame of my face and shoulders as if to size me up. She ceases to lose eye contact with me until she moves to the person sitting next to me. These gestures seem improvised and specific to each of our postures. There is an intense sensual feeling of seduction, as she remains focused on keeping eye contact with her voyeurs. She moves on to the next until she has had an intimate experience with all of us. This closeness sets up a successfully clear relationship we are to have with the performers, space and concepts: What, where and who performs intimacy, voyeurism, permission, confrontation and private/public display. These are all ideas that are set up in this first solo. A type of active and passive looking allows for a conversation to permeate from performer to audience member, even though we are not ‘speaking’ back.
At the conclusion of the first solo, we are asked to move to the kitchen where we are introduced to Suarez. She sets a timer and music begins.
This solo can be best described as:
Kitchen finger pointing. Right index finger up up up up. fist. Intense expression, focus, gaze out. Open explodes release contain control balance subtle shifts of weight. Small use of space. Frontal. Frontal. Rhythmical, giving direction, sucking finger, masturbating men, red dress, pregnant, timer, timing, perfect, music with a house acid jazz beat, intense focus. Red lipstick. Baby-blue-kitchen. Pink water. Nook. Sitting sideways. Warm. Warm. Buzzer. Hot. Stop.We are led to the second cottage and are greeted by two female musicians: Rachel Sexton and Allison Spieth, (with musical score by Joel Stein). We see the domesticity of a queer couple, or what we assume is a partnership per se, calm and quiet, home on Friday night. The fireplace is burning, and Meg Wolfe warms her feet. Bonnie Levin prepares tea in the kitchen and pulls out a few pieces of bread to be toasted. Wolfe seems to be restless, as she anxiously sits and stands, moving from one room to the next. In fact she seems bored. We see the two women engage in a non-interactive duet; Modern dance moves that float and poke, carve and shift in the tiny space available. It is more a dance of negative space as two musicians and six spectators occupy most of the available dancing space. We are encouraged by the tour gu(y)id to walk about the space, from room to room. I always welcome permission to do things like this, as one never knows how far he/she can challenge the confines of the performance space. I suppose I can sit in the bathtub if I want, or even on the bed…
...but then I think, what if I get in trouble and Meg Wolfe has to secretly tell me that she is about to dance in the bed and I have to move? How embarrassing!
Depending on what room you are standing/sitting in, you get a different perspective of the activity. I am currently in the kitchen and need to move, as I am not sure what Levin's choreography has to do with her role in the dance and I am a bit uncomfortable. The movement is neither gestural nor site specific. It is kind of dancee like site specific dancee when one does modern dance moves in a really cool space for the sake of doing modern dance moves in a really cool space. I am a bit nervous for her. Wolfe engages in similar modern dancing, which is nice to look at and I am happy to see them both suspending so beautifully, but I am not sure it’s necessary.
My critical lens is starting to overwhelm my senses.
Perhaps this particular movement vocabulary is merely reflecting the filling of time, as this partnership seems to be about routine things and the space between the two. This relationship is less about the female orgasm and more about the romance and passion that is missing. They both remember the sexually fervent connection they once had. Sad. I move into the bedroom to hear a voice-over interview of Meg speaking about her memories of orgasms. With no one to talk to as adolescents about sexual exploration and experimentation, these women seem to share a common experience with each other, or at least it seems an overall theme of the evening so far.
Replay of the last thing I just saw.Two. Couple. Distance. A p a r tKitchen, Living, Bed, Bath and Beyond the spaces between seem like gaps in an already divided dome, roam, there is little room. Rustic browns, greens, tans and sands… exposed beams, seams of terry cloth and corduroy line the drapes, scapes of painted misty something(s) rather.This is the masculine cottage.A brunette Plays the viola. And another the cello. Kitchen sits. We sit. We sit.Fireplace. Toaster. Stove. Drove. She drove her modern dance movements into the floor. Modern dance that twists and floats. They are older. Like 40 and 50 Older. Older than the last two.Elbow, fingertips, luscious hips and glossy lips,These lipsticks, dykes, lady lovers, covers…Meg plays with the sheets. Sheets folded. Perfect better perfectUndo.perfect better Perfect. folded Sheets she sleeps but not reallyRedoThe bed is made and thought is hadStaring out the window, ponder lights, cheap tech trick, flood lights outside lights the inside.The insideShadows of blinds on the face and breast, lace and nest of the bedroom place…She’s aloneAnd she’s alone togetherBathtub. sensual in the bathtub.Swaying back, waning, rememberingCold feet, water, wet, water pet her vagina running water hot running waterWater heating, the water is boiling but not really. Timing is off.Toast is burning but not really.Sound score of remembering orgasm.Distinct Talking, remembering talking, remembering voices, instructions, waiting pause.Stillness.Sheets Comfort Sleep Again Tomorrow.AgainTomorrow.We move to a space between cottage 2 and cottage 3 to find a hot tub. We are instructed to put a pair of headphones on.
We listen to the sounds of wind up dolls and baby goo goo and gah gahs. Mr. Rizzo pulls back the translucent curtain framing the tub, exposing two seemingly topless women sitting facing us. Cat Brewer and Waewdao Sirisook, with faces glowing as only steam can do, stare convincingly with deadpan faces and draw us into the tub with them. They begin to signal with their arms as air-traffic controllers direct 747s, elbows bending and extending, forearms and hands motion toward and away from us. Confident and poised, these women seem patient at first with little expression. They are business like. Their gestures begin to vary as finger pointing and signaling evolves into erratic directions given to someone who is clueless. Moments of exhilaration emerge only to dissolve into disappointment. This game continues as we surreptitiously hear from behind us the vibrating women from cottage one. Whether or not this is planned, it offers at terrific second layer to our laughing dolls in the headphones. The women in the tub demonstrate the necessity to inform their partner how to offer clitoral pleasure. It is hard not to assume that men are the butts of this joke…but I would like to remain neutral on the subject. Ha! There could be women out there who don’t know how to give another woman pleasure. Surely everyone is a novice first go around.
The spa duets conclude in exhaustion and the women resort to turning on the jets instead of continuing with the hand signaling. Perhaps they achieved a state of euphoria and the jets represent a stream of orgasmic pleasure. Or, the jets represent a much better time to be had then dealing with an inexperienced mouth down below. In any event, this short sketch is a necessary and humorous diversion from the more serious tone of the last piece.
Aside 1: Choreographically each gesture seems tied to the next, and the women, not always in unison, have variations that differ from each other. They are well rehearsed. The vocabulary seems mechanical at first, and off the cuff at other times. The more erratic and improvised moments represent one's need to aggressively instruct a partner who doesn’t know what he/she is doing.
Aside 2: The women in my group seem to laugh far more than me(n). Clearly they can relate more to this subject.
We are invited into the bedroom of the third and final cottage. We are instructed to stand against the wall. On top of the bed is a woman, Kai Hazelwood, covered in a sheet, head to toe. She is on her side. The curvature of her body is detailed by the melting of a thin high thread count sheet; it drops and falls into every crevice of her neck, thighs and negative space in and around her limbs. Her breath is visible.
We hear a voice-over of a woman retelling the story of her first sexual experience. Humorous in her rendition, this voice-over paints a very visually stimulating image; a fat and juicy nine-inch cock, football player type who likes to play rough and take charge…pins me down and slaps me a little. Bends me over and plows the….
This isn’t about me, you say?
We see movement under the sheets. Soon April Rose hilariously comes out of the closest as only an orgasm fairy can do, and stands on top of the bed above Hazelwood. She begins to convulse, performing an erratic series of gestures as though she is on a table at a club induced with ecstasy. Hazelwood's forearm and fist penetrate under Rose’s dress and out the front of her abdomen like a scene from Alien, acting as the energy and power of the orgasm she conjures from the memory of her first 9-incher. The phallic forearm dances a jig, beating and swirling (because jigs swirl) and rendering Rose into an ecstatic state. Rose soon begins tracing the voiceover narrative with her own voice. The story all of a sudden becomes very personal and real…and eventually climaxes.
I am wet.
We are instructed to exit the room with some final words by our orgasm expert.
This is the only moment in the program that I find particularly problematic. Pat Payne, playing a motherly, friend-type orgasm expert, is positioned in the kitchen, making gingerbread persons. She informs us that she is there to answer questions, or to ask us if we have any insight into our own pleasure seeking vices that we might like to share. She shares some advice and wisdom…which is nice. But her overzealous and over-animated character seems trite and forced. Though friendly, she is over-acting in a valley girl southern black diva sort of way. These two archetypes seem to contradict each other, which I can't imagine is intentional on Suarez' part, and becomes tiresome. I have no doubt about the skill of Payne, however the choice for this sexpert to be a ‘character' is an unfortunate choice.
Recommendations. I want to see a real expert who is prepared to answer questions. I want to see a gingerbread clitoris or instructional video with a vagina and a vibrator. I want the fantasy to be transcending into reality; that this is a serious subject. If it is necessary to cast someone in this role, the character should be played cool and matter of fact.
These are just my thoughts.
Thanks for reading.
If you want to keep reading…
…As in, the cutting room floor.The provocative publicity image used to sell Wet Spots, I heard through the 405 vine, was offensive to a few dance community members who seem to feel that the woman’s orgasm has no place in the dance place. This is neither hearsay nor speculation y’all. An email was sent to the artist. Brilliant! Perhaps the person who is upset about the woman’s orgasm being a topic of conversation feels the male orgasm is more important, as it has been a staple metaphor of the male gaze for centuries where the female dancing body has been eroticized and objectified, an expense paid for a wet cock here and there.
A wet panty…forget about it. Let’s brand an O on your chest Christine, for "Oh no you didn't."!!! Way to go!!! Bravo I say for getting some peoples panties in a bunch, pun definitely intended.
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Now, if I were a WeHo queen I might use words like gag, barf or please! –to describe my reactions to the work. If I were a WeHo queen you might hear me mutter whatever or seriously? as in like, you have to be kidding me. Or maybe if I were a WeHo queen I might not have gone at all.
If I were a WeHo queen…but I’m not. I’m a Silver Lake queen. It’s different over here.
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As many of you know, I love vagina. I love all vaginas big and small, hairy and nubile, tight and torn. My many many many girlfriends talk to me all the time about theirs. From boyfriends to husbands to fingers and vibrators, I know what goes inside of them…and I know what makes them wet. Sometimes it’s the corner edge of a sofa or the vibrating head of a shower. Sometimes it’s the vigorous rubbing together of ones legs on a hot humid day. Should I go on?
Men are privileged to get off any time they want. Sex is over when men finish. It’s the same between gay men too…when the first one finishes, it’s over, unless there is some sort of fetish involved, which I would know nothing about.
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My asshole is wet.
This is all out of order.
Is there a formula for site specific dance that enables craft and vision to persevere over the obstacle of dancing in a cool space for no reason, look at how cool I am, trite type of choreography? I have often wondered what makes site-specific dance resonate with someone who finds problematic the work of those who want to dance in/on non-traditional dance spaces, as they often lack substance or sustainability. We are not in the Judson era, dance anywhere and all places, with challenging contemporary notions of modernism, are we? Or are we? Is everything an experiment these days? What constitutes an experiment and what makes it work? So what makes Wet Spots successful?
Mental notes
