PREVIEW: BONEDANSE PRESENTS "THIS IS A DAMAGE MANUAL"
2012-01-27 2:36:02 PM
By Sid Smith
We won't really know until we see it, of course, but in concept, "This is a Damage Manual" looms as one of the more ambitious undertakings from Atalee Judy and her troupe now known as BONEdanse.
The content explores decades of mental illness and efforts to sweep it under the rug and/or medicate it away, from mid-century tranquilizers and self-help LP recordings through 1980s punk dislocation up to and including contemporary commercials with alluring temptations for magical anti-depressants. As a kind of historical prelude, Judy herself enacts a solo in the guise of Adolph Hitler, a sociopath and serial killer who managed to take over a modern nation.
When told it sounds ambitious, Judy replied, "It may be. You tell me. We're just throwing things out there that stem from what's touched or perplexed me. I am disturbed when I watch a commercial for an anti-depressant in which there's this woman going through her day, followed everywhere by this cartoon black blob that looks sad, has eyeballs and blinks. The point of the commercial is, 'Take this, and your depression goes away.'
"I have friends who take anti-depressants who feel they're in a gray zone all day," she continued. "I come from a family with mental illness issues, and we swept it under the rug, some relatives taking anti-depressants to be normal. We don't have any answers to any of this in our program. We can't cure what ails you. But I do have severe fears and concerns about what we're doing. We have more and more pills catered to more and more things.
"If we have any message, it's that you can liberate yourself or learn to function with the damage you have," she added. "Accept that we're damaged and use it and move with it."
The inspiration comes from vinyl recordings of onetime self-help gurus Judy was introduced to by her partner, who collects old records. Dr. Claire Weekes, a proponent of tranquilizers, and soothingly voiced Earl Nightingale are among them. "We have a solo about a stereotypical '50s housewife dealing with what at the time they called a woman's 'nervous disorder' or a nervous breakdown," Judy explained. It's performed by Mindy Meyers and crafted by guest choreographer Jyl Fehrenkamp.
Much of the score comes from the post-punk troupe, the Damage Manual, made up of musicians with former punk icons who've settled here in Chicago. One section deals with 1980s AIDS hysteria and misinformation, the dancers clad in hazmat suits made out of comforter quilting fabric. Judy herself enacts the solo about Hitler, while there's another about a dysfunctional ballerina, performed by Janna Barta, with one foot in a toe shoe, the other bare.
"This is a Damage Manual" is poised to pop the bubble of overly optimistic fakery and raise a cautionary flag regarding our reliance on drugs as a smart alternative. "We're raising our children on medication," Judy remarked.
BONEdanse has been undergoing a mild transition of late. Its name has been simplified from the old Breakbone Dance Inc. moniker, and there are subtle shifts in performance styles, too.
"It's a paring down and the result of my feeling that we'd become a bit boxed in by categories," Judy said. "Once we got a reputation for a certain style and aggressive, confrontational placement, I started to get uncomfortable."
Her trademark physical approach survives, but with key changes. Is Judy becoming more conventional? "I'm still a physical performer, but I got frustrated with making company members learn to do what I do naturally. I'm still doing my usual physicality, but I'm the oddball. I'm not forcing it on the other company members. So we're touching on a lot more different styles of dance now, and, if you want to call that more conventional, I'm fine with that."
BONEdanse performs "This is a Damage Manual" Feb. 2-12 at Theatre Wit, 1229 W. Belmont Av. For tickets: 773.975.8150 or www.theaterwit.org.
