by Leigh Witchel
La MaMa’s Ellen Stewart Theatre reopened with a guest star: Stephen Petronio and friends planning to turn the theater into a cabaret, promising “Punk Picks and Other Delights.” It didn’t turn out to be all that punk, but there was plenty of luscious dancing on display.
The theater was set up with the usual risers for seating, but in front the stage was bordered by small circular tables topped with red tablecloths to mimic the ambiance of a nightclub, only without the alcohol. Hazers provided smoke without cigarettes.
This nightclub opened with an act more beatnik than punk: a solo by Johnnie Cruise Mercer that had been developed at the Petronio Residency Center upstate, “and then we hit the boundary where the sun’s wind ceased.”
To a soundscape of low rumbles and ocean noises, Mercer appeared on a bridge above the stage in street clothes, a baseball cap and a hoodie. He made a slow jogging progression across the bridge, down the stairs on the other side, and after sitting on the stairs, on to the stage. Followspots illuminated an uninhabited stage; one light settled on a music stand, the other on empty space.
Mercer worked purposefully, but in his own time. There was the barest suspicion of movement, bending and rocking side to side. That seemed to turn into riding a horse, to becoming the horse itself. It turned out that this solo was one of a series of character studies based on the Four Horsemen in Revelations, a fact that wouldn’t be clear without reading the program, and also wasn’t important.
Things got aimless. Mercer moved both a music stand and a microphone in the longest and most awkward possible route through the house, and that didn’t feel deliberate. He gave a long speech that was only intermittently intelligible because it was spoken away from us, through a mask.
Mercer came to center and wrapped himself in a black curtain he had picked up while sitting on the stair and started singing. Again, it was less for us than for him. A glowing fluorescent circle illuminated his exit at the back.
As a performance, the piece lost track and was unsatisfying. It lay at the outskirts of what performance is, and Mercer knew that; the company he established is dedicated to process. It felt as if he would have danced this whether we were there or not. We could debate about process versus product in performance, but isn’t not giving a crap about the audience part of punk? And if there were ever an appropriate space for process over product, La MaMa is it.
After intermission, Petronio’s company took over with a downtown vaudeville that delivered plenty of product, in small bites. Petronio excerpted solos, duets and group pieces from old and new works, bookending them with two solo takes on Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring.”
Tess Montoya appeared topless in Leigh Bowery’s costume for the opening of “Full Half Wrong” – a huge braid snaking down her back and under her crotch to become a merkin. She rolled and dropped into plié, swinging her hips. In the dim light, you had just enough time to add it up, but not enough to be shocked; the excerpt cut off just as it was heading into the pounding rhythms of “Rite,” a reason to wish it would have continued.
When Nicholas Sciscione appeared dancing to The Stranglers in an excerpt from 1995’s “Lareigne” the aesthetic of Petronio’s “Punk Picks” clarified: The Stranglers may have started in the punk scene of the 1970’s, but Petronio was a Club Kid from the late 80’s and early 90’s. In silver shorts and a filmy shirt, Sciscione was flowing, running and looking sexy. It wasn’t the ugly and powerful rebellion of punk, but the angelic gifts of youth and beauty.
The combination of costumes that both flowed and showed skin is a kind of uniform for Petronio’s company. Petronio’s vocabulary is also recognizable. The legs scissor while the body pitches or corkscrews in tight positions or huge attitudes, revolving again and again, building into lush phrases. You can see the similarity – it seems every piece is built on that – but it’s a broad enough palette that you wouldn’t get tired of it quickly.
Mac Twining, another beautiful boy, this time tall and skinny, danced a 1996 solo to ‘Sleeping Pills’ by The London Suede. Again, there were more gorgeous shapes: arabesques and ronds des jambes. An oversized capsule (containing “tiny time pills?”) was strapped to his back, like angelic cargo.
Ryan Pliss, wearing long, blond and slack pigtails at either side of his head and a deconstructed jacket by Tara Subkoff/Imitation of Christ, danced a 2008 solo, “For Today I Am A Boy,” to a haunting song by Antony and the Johnsons. Pliss’ legs were toothpick thin and flew up to extension with almost no resistance. Petronio seems to prize a loose hip joint in all his dancers, and when he left, Pliss drew his hand mysteriously across his face like a courtesan.
Two Elvis Presley numbers distilled the mood the evening was looking for: decadent and filthy/gorgeous. The moves for Twining and Pliss in “Are You Lonesome Tonight” were decorous and contrived; each pose was as pretty and self conscious as their silk pajamas. Still, so is the song, with Presley dropping into a spoken bridge about his gold-record-selling heartbreak.
Sciscione returned for “Love Me Tender” and flailed round in tight turns, dipping into arabesque. Wearing a lavender harness and face mask to Elvis gave a nasty downtown patina to épater les bourgeois. But Sciscione’s creamy movement quality was again more pretty than nasty.
Jaqlin Medlock is one of Petronio’s most arresting dancers, but she sometimes seems like a changeling in the company: short and ferocious with a sharp, slicing attack. She ended the show with the final Danse Sacral from “Full Half Wrong.” The solo seemed more of an incantation than a sacrifice. There were only a few references back to Nijinsky; the head cocked at an angle and a single jump in place. Medlock looked like a fertility goddess more than a chosen one, rolling her hips, slapping her elbows against her torso and rocking. Still, it’s a piece that has so many versions (including a very successful one made almost three decades ago by Petronio’s former partner, Michael Clark) that it’s disappointing this one didn’t build. Medlin bent over at the end; that was it.
So now that punk is thinking about collecting social security, what makes something punk? Black leather, ripped jeans, safety pins? We didn’t see much of that aesthetic. Rebellion? Mercer provided that in a way. But from Petronio, the occasion of getting back into a theater and in front of an audience delivered mostly Other Delights.
copyright © 2021 by Leigh Witchel
“Petronio Punk Picks and Other Delights” – Stephen Petronio Company
Ellen Stewart Theatre, New York, NY
November 19, 2021
Cover: Nicholas Sciscione in “Love Me Tender.” Photo credit © Julie Lemberger.
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