Girl pain. Girl rage. Girl power. That just about sums up the arc of the storytelling in Breakbone DanceCo's evening-length work "The ONE Series," an unabashed estrogen fest that ultimately gives way to a high testosterone blast.
What this description doesn't quite suggest, however, is the highly theatrical and ingenious mix of live performance, architecture, music, film and video, punk-inspired shock therapy and simulated (at least I hope it is) self- mutilation that feeds into this 85-minute concert of goth romance -- a work created by choreographer Atalee Judy and her all-female dance ensemble, with help from a slew of multimedia collaborators.
The production, staged this past weekend at the Dance Center of Columbia College and to be repeated this coming weekend, is not for the meek. Sequences of bondage, piercing, sexual deviance and some rather bloody feminine imagery is a big part of the mix. And not since David Cronenberg's creepy 1988 film "Dead Ringers" have gynecological instruments been made to seem quite so horrific. But you've got to hand it to these women: They certainly never shrink from the subject at hand.
The beautifully photographed backdrop for much of this stormy psychodrama is a grand European castle of the fairy tale variety -- a vast structure in a state of gorgeous decay. And the suggestion in the seven individual sections of the work is that for centuries women have in some way been trapped and tormented in the romantic maze of just such a castle, and that they are now breaking free in ways that can be exceedingly brutal.
Most of the sequences play out on film first and are then brought to life on the stage. And the juxtaposition of these two forms -- so different in scale and focus -- is fascinating to observe.
Elisa Foshay is the red-headed marionette trapped in bondagelike straps and enclosed in a turret of the castle. Tabitha Faes is the solo cellist playing among the ruins, whose cello later becomes her lover and whose gown is eventually ripped off to reveal that she, too, has become a cello. A woman's mirror image leads to other strange involvements courtesy of performers Mindy Meyers, Heather Fiene and Liz Diaz. Blood begins to flow in Suzanne Dado's stunning sequence -- reminiscent of a scene from the film "American Beauty" -- in which a woman floats in a bathtub among rose petals that can just as easily morph into a bloody pool.
Judy's no-holds-barred film and live performance may send some fleeing the theater as she delves into female pain and mutilation (from safety pins to abortions and mastectomies). Jean Genet would have loved this scene. Graphic and nightmarish -- and not for anyone with an aversion to needles and the like -- it is completely over the top.
The final sequences in "The ONE series" feature a kind of Amazonian army of the night with Rachel Damon and Sarah Haas leading all the women in ferocious, contact improvisation-based movement that suggests they are both lovers and warriors.
Carl Wiedemann's film and video work is enhanced by the complex stage lighting of Stephen Arnold and A. Cameron Zetty. And the elaborate costumes by Branimira Ivanova and Judy -- deconstructed gowns in red, purple and black patent leather -- emphasize the fact that the dead can dance.