Saturday night, July 26, 2008

There is nothing I love more than a cabaret. In fact I was having so much fun at the closing performances at Latitude 53, I entirely missed Julianna Barabas' performance. (We'll just need to bring her to Winnipeg.) From what I could see, in the small gallery she washed peoples' hands and sang to them. Everyone came out looking soft and stoned.

I was busy in the main room, watching TL Cowan bear our sartorial secrets and Alexis O'Hara riff on her experiences of sorrow in Edmonton and beyond.

TL assigned us each a number and had us stand up, one-by-one, to hear the fashion crime of which we had been changed. She then gave us license to trade offenses with other audience members. Somehow, her 1980s fashion-fascist persona didn't humiliate but brought us together. We all mingled, strangers and friends, to talk about the accusations against us. I ditched my first change (dressing to look skinny) and acquired another (changing clothes many times to look like I don't care how I look). At one point I also had the dreaded camel-toe accusation, but a group of us decided to embrace big-labial pride and rip up the charge. One audience member from France wondered aloud about how the sentencing might proceed. We discussed the guillotine possibility. But instead TL listened to our confessions, gave us shiny stickers whether we were absolved or guilty, and authoritatively told us, "Don't worry. It's just fashion." It was lovely to have a litany of insecurity spoken aloud, and then have all those private fears so cooly dismissed. Do I smell? Can everyone tell I buy sweatshop fashion? Is there some bodily fluid on my skirt? Quite possibly, but the same could be true of all us us. And anyway, "It's only fashion".

Alexis then performed a brilliant audio piece about her Sorrow Sponge project, sorrow itself, and the particulars sorrows of collecting audio source material in Edmonton. A stream of consciousness musing was beautifully written (?)/improvised(?) and manipulated live through a panoply of audio gizmos.

Listening to Alexis' text I thought of how alone we all are - definitely loneliness has been something that has come up many times in conversations during the festival. And how paradoxical performance art is to bring us together to think about it.

And the togetherness kept coming as Alexis DJed an impromptu dance party. It was one of those magic evenings where everyone danced together, unselfconsciously, as if the night would never end. Break-meister David Khang taught us some dancing moves before hurting himself once again. We educated Kira O'Reilly about proper Canadian winter apparel (fur AND feathers!). Grapes were eaten and downlow lemonade drank. Finally, despite many complaints, Todd cast us out into the night.