Danceworks' current show is titled The Bra Project. If not for breasts bras would not be and when seeing a dance performance breasts are the last things that draw my eye. Dancers, like yoga practitioners, have long lean muscles as a result of their craft and generally don't carry excess weight to have to move. By design dancers are rarely busty, and with all the gorgeously defined shoulder, back, abdominal, calf and thigh muscles displayed, breasts are the last things I find myself looking at. But that's exactly what The Bra Project does: it places breasts front and center.
The performance space at Danceworks is a small, black box-style theatre that is always warm and cozy. When I walked in, there was a set of mats in front of the stadium-style seats to accommodate extra show goers. There were young women giving one another back massages and older women talking and laughing with one another with celebratory abandon. The crowd was diverse; even a middle-aged rocker dude in leather pants lounged on the mat.
The show begins with Kelly Anderson performing a dance in which she tries unsuccessfully to create cleavage and ends up having more fun by herself with a bottle of bubbly. This sets the tempo for a show which does a good job to not take its self too seriously to have a good time. Energy is high and during the bra burning 1960's era piece the mix of music and movement with attitude I caught myself nodding to the beat.
The vast majority of the show has a great campy vibe. An unholstered female dancer came on stage between dance numbers and pantomimed nicknames for breasts. One piece pokes fun at young girls using balloons, socks, toilet paper, anything to fill out their padded training bras. Male dancers are sparingly used and in one piece the boys are continually tantalized to eat the apples held by women in lingerie. There was one solo male dancer, but it took an intuitive viewer to realize it beyond the heels and corset and eyelashes while lip syncing. Out of the entire show only one piece left me absolutely indifferent and not surprisingly it was the 1980s.
My favorite was danced to the sultry Herb Alpert's Love Potion #9 by dancers dolled up as breastfeeding mothers. This hilarious piece is a daydream that laughs at breasts viewed as nothing but erogenous zones while their primary function has been all but ignored by pop culture. The sexy steps end just short of lactation when the three mothers hear babies cry.
The show ends full circle with a tribute to women living with breast cancer. I'm frustrated to continue hearing about breast cancer, frustrated the dialogue still needs to continue. I wish we'd find a way to solve the problem already. There is a bra quilt Danceworks is raffling at the end of the run whose proceeds go to After Breast Cancer Diagnosis, a support system for women in various stages of recovery.
Danceworks, Inc
1661 N. Water Street
Milwaukee, WI 53202
Phone: (414) 277-8480
http://www.danceworksmke.org/