I’m going to admit right now that I didn’t make it all the way through 10 Tiny Dances at the Works last night. The show didn’t start until after 11, and I started to nod off during dance #7. (It didn’t help that the show was sold out and the auditorium at WSH gets pretty damn warm.) The show was something of a best-of—6 of the performances were reprisals of past Tiny Dances works.

Standouts before I fell asleep: The athletic Snag, from Carla Mann and Jim McGinn; Kemumaki Yoko’s taut, twitchy, robotic No Nukes; the beach-blanket bingo antics of Mike Barber and Cydney Wilkes’ Wicked, which won the office pool for first set of boobs at Ten Tiny Dances. (Really, next year, let’s have a pool.)

And after extricating myself from the auditorium, I watched from the high-def TV in the beer garden as drag artist Taylor Mac “pulled something out of his butt,” and local company tEEth revisited their stage-smashing Splinter:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=WKLShs99wmw

Alison Hallett served nobly as the Mercury's arts editor from 2008-2014. Her proud legacy lives on.

2 replies on “Ten Tiny Dances at the Works”

  1. Did you miss the excellent performance by Portland Taiko? Definitely my favorite and worth staying up for. The three others you mentioned were also fantastic, in addition to the bearded gentleman (#5?) with his graceful pop & lock-ish choreography.

    What was with the Marilyn Monroe/Andy Warhol(?) duo? Why did they get three slots? Totally unnecessary and annoying, really. Not to mention Taylor Mac’s drag burlesque, whoopee, how original and subversi….zzzzz…

  2. I was kinda bummed out by the evening. Given, I didn’t stay for the whole thing, but with some lackluster performances at the beginning, and a late start to begin with, I was starting to feel like my time wasn’t being respected as an audience member. It made me wonder if perhaps PICA/TBA has outgrown Washington High School. This was the second night I had been to where THE WORKS felt completely over-crowded and that the organizers didn’t have resources to meet the demand. For an event like this to be successful it needs to start on time. Not only that but I feel as though they lost money on food/drink that could have been consumed if they had opened the doors earlier.

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