Shameless duo Chelsea & Magda throw a Shame Symposium at FringeArts
For the last two decades, the Philadelphia dance community has become so inclusionary and collaborative that it has given rise to a kind of stylized local circus that I hope will run on. The Shame Symposium by Chelsea & Magda exemplified this trend Thursday night, beginning this weekend's run at FringeArts.
For the last two decades, the Philadelphia dance community has become so inclusionary and collaborative that it has given rise to a kind of stylized local circus that I hope will run on. The Shame Symposium by Chelsea & Magda exemplified this trend Thursday night, beginning this weekend's run at FringeArts.
Chelsea Murphy and Magda San Millan came on the scene about three years ago, probably not long after (as they say in the show) they met trying out for the dance department at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and were not accepted. They are buoyant, brazen, and often bizarre, and I've been itching to write about them since I first saw them do a bit in some North Philly basement. And I guess the long lineup of local talent that put their thumbs in this pie shows how engaging these two are as performance artists and clownish dancers.
The Shame Symposium developed partly through out-of-state and local residencies, leading Murphy and San Millan to look back on their work and themselves and explore ideas of shame and pleasure.
The experiment of equating percentages of shame and pleasure yielded some far-fetched specimens.
The two appear in flashier-than-Flash-Gordon outfits fitted with sparkling flying buttresses on the shoulders or hips designed by Ana-Miren San Millan. The opening dialogue with power-point style explications of "Shame Theory" could have been cut by 10 minutes for my tastes, but when the movement finally started, I was all in.
Magda's shame was her aggressiveness, but she balanced it with an ungainly show of angled limbs and body parts that ought not to have bent that way, yet it gave her pleasure, balancing out her shame.
Magda strips to criss-crossed electrical taped breasts, and she calls on Jaime Maseda, a ringer in the audience, to spar with her onstage. They whack at each other realistically and roughly, but it's all choreographed down to the last bare-butt butt.
The action was so wild at times that Michael Kiley's soundscape could have taken off into Spike Jones land, but instead it subtly underscored the humor with snippets of music box tinkling, Eric Satie, melodramatic organ riffs, and thunder.
Chelsea's shame focused on being "cute," but she was no less angry. Yet her flippant dances endeared, with a twerking, multicolored bustle of ribbons and light-up sneakers.
"Rehearsing" one duet first made it all the funnier when they danced in toto, if not tutu. Nichole Canuso choreographed another duet for them, and additional "demonstrators" from the audience were Lily Kind, and Jenn Kidwell.
A bedtime ritual with Chelsea coloring lady parts in her coloring book ended the show. Decades ago, Karen Finley and Carolee Schneeman grappled with women's body issues far more viciously. Magda and Chelsea are "girls" having fun carrying on the discourse - with updated intensity of their own.
Additional shows 8 p.m. Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday at Fringe Arts, 140 N. Columbus Blvd. Tickets: $29 general; $15 students and 25-under. Information: 215-413-1318, fringearts.com.