by Leigh Witchel
Anabella Lenzu’s “The night that you stopped acting” was a gift to us, but also to herself . . . whoever that self may be. Her modest, one-woman show was staged at the West Park Presbyterian Church, an 1889 Romanesque church on the Upper West Side in danger of being torn down rather than face its massive costs of upkeep.
We gathered outside waiting for the show to begin. Lenzu’s tagline for her company, Anabella Lenzu/Dance Drama is “Thought Provoking Historically Conscious Dance Theater.” The company’s name and its slogan told you what you needed to know. She appeared at the door; her personality illustrated by a cheerful face punctuated with a slash of red lipstick.
She stood on the church steps and through a small red megaphone, spoke to us briefly about the history of the church and its activism, as well as the process and detours through the pandemic of getting this show on. It was “A show about a show – a show about me.” The production values were simple, with a limited budget. Lenzu spoke to us from the sanctuary, next to her was a paper-covered screen. At one point the lighting was a flashlight.
“The night that you stopped acting” was not about dance design or vocabulary, but telling a story. Lenzu was playing a theatricalized version of herself, friendly, with a thick accent. She was endearingly Little League and larger than life at the same time. She wasn’t working in her native tongue, so occasionally grammar got mangled. But she was also using the persona to disarm us. Somehow it worked for a soloist in a church to an audience the size of a party.
Lenzu led us through her life, and a bit of Argentina’s, through anecdotes and pop songs from her home country. There was a cheerful amateur nature to Lenzu recounting the story of herself as a little girl, who at five wanted to be a ballerina in a tutu and tiara. Instead, she suffered the indignity of having to go onstage as a bullfighter and a man no less.
During the show, she functioned as a storyteller and hostess, “So now I am going to dance for you.” At the time, she was “almost 47” and performed a piece she made at age 18. She put ruffs on her wrists and acted out the painful emotions of “Vesti la giubba” from Pagliacci, but halfway in, stopped. “I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m not a man, nor a clown.” Questions of identity simmered throughout, but mixed with the simple, nervewracking questions of being a performer. “I can’t do this part. My abdominals. . . . I have two kids!”
So she narrated the rest. “And then death. The people clapped and I left the stage.”
She played hostess again. “I’m going to play a song for you.” But an ADHD hostess. Nothing got completed, everything was cut off in impatience. “OK, enough.” Now a dance she made at 21. She put on a hat, danced in front of a screen. It became a duet with her shadow. And with time.
A brief apologetic for how she felt about art followed, where she offered both the questions of well-intentioned friends and critics, “Who cares about the creative process?” And her answers. She does.
“I just want you to be here and listen. That’s all.”
Not quite all. Right after, she made us get up and dance to a song. As with many New York performances, plenty of people in the audience were her friends. It was a kind of party. But it was also akin to the comedian Andy Kaufman. Suddenly she was making us participate and perform with her. Would it also become for her?
Lenzu was born in 1975, and her history is also a history of Argentina. She mentioned the World Cup victory in 1978, then right after the 30,000 desaparecidos murdered, often by drugging them and throwing them alive out of planes, over the ocean to leave no trace. She didn’t dwell on it – it was enough that we were aware.
The “Star Spangled Banner” played while she wrapped herself in a muslin cloth of slogans. She paraded with it, threw it down angrily, then used a twisted corner as an imaginary microphone to lip synch. Everything felt very homemade. And again, enough of that. “The night that you stopped acting” was a show of episodes that never managed to finish.
Lenzu moved to the side off the sanctuary, so we saw what she was doing via a camera projecting to the screen onstage. She slid down her sweats and pushed her hands through a gap in her legs, as she created slightly higher-tech finger puppets of inquiry.
“What makes a good artist?
What makes a good parent?
Where do you belong?”
Returning to us, she gave a manifesto: “I am an artist. And this is for me. This is me. Thank you.” Then the same words inflected as a meek request of a beggar.
The show wasn’t polished, and some episodes that didn’t land or were mawkish hadn’t been pruned out. That was a bug and a feature. The editing was scattershot, but you were never entirely sure if Lenzu was crazy like a fox; that there was a plan in looking unplanned.
Her ending gave evidence of that. In another Andy Kaufman moment, she made us go up on her stage, the sanctuary, and offered us all wine, but there were only a handful of glasses. Before we knew it, we were all onstage and she was in the audience, watching us. For all the raw moments in “The night that you stopped acting,” that transformation was brilliant and perfectly timed.
“I am an artist,” she added from the pews, and unwrapped a cloth. There was the torso of a skeleton inside. She danced with it, waved to us and left through the open doors of the church into the street.
copyright © 2022 by Leigh Witchel
“The night that you stopped acting” – Anabella Lenzu/Dance Drama
West Park Presbyterian Church, New York, NY
October 15, 2022
Cover: Anabella Lenzu in “The night that you stopped acting.” Photo credit © Todd Carroll.
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