On Edge: Performance at the End of the Twentieth Century

Big Bang Theory

• • • Big Bang Theory Universe Viewed as Sea of Bubbles -New York Times headline January, 1986 The little pink pig steps daintily off the stage to sniff, first my foot, then the other feet cramped into lotus positions. Piglet tugs at its white leash and harness. I barely note the white-clad performer who's just crossed the stage on his back, holding that leash, because a woman in black swimsuit to his right is "bouncing" eggs. Hard. The front row dodges the splatter that continues whenall her eggs broken-the woman dives into the gook and slides. At the back, a naked woman rises from a silver tub. Here in the center piece of A New Model of the Universe, the blueprint for the future is not clear. But the contradictions are. Poppo works with contradiction at every level of performance. That's why he'll stage cosmic spectacles in rubble-strewn lots or ramshackle spaces on the Lower East Side. That's apparently why he calls his mostly female troupe "GoGo Boys." That's why he sends a clean pig onstage to be the crowd pleaser while a nuisance performer scrambles eggs out into the audience. This is more than a theater of images. Poppo's work suggests alchemy, the process of purifying, perhaps transcending contradiction. Poppo Shiraishi was trained as a Butoh dancer, though he adds on his press release that he's "shamanized people with his mysterious power." His performances at the now defunct 8BC were like neighborhood religious rites, the last of them, Eternal Performance, drawing some 1,500 people (police estimate) on its final night. Model of the Universe, staged at the CUANDO Community Center off the Bowery, started out looking almost normal, like some post- Big Bang Theory 93 Transcending contradiction: Poppo (right) in A New Model of the Universe-with "go-go boys." (© 1986 Massimo Agus.) Cunningham movement piece (however heavily influenced by tai chi and yoga), but looking whited-out nonetheless. The powdered bodies. The BVDS for costumes. The snowy drop cloth over the stage. This (feminine principle, lunar) in contrast to the near-naked performers painted metallic gold at the end (masculine principle, solar). In the alchemical universe, the integrated personality is androgynous or hermaphroditic. Poppo danced his first solo in a stiff ruffled skirt, and danced it like it was his last. Holding tension in the bow of his body, then hurling himself at the stage. Leaving a streak of white makeup from his head at my feet. Balancing off his classicism with risk. At the end of the performance-with metallic dancers carrying wooden beams for the night's final polarity-Poppo seems to have painted even his eyeballs with gold, a riveting, revolting image. John Gernand, stage manager/production consultant for last weekend 's spectacle, explained that the performance was supposed to build to a shotai state. This Butoh term means the performer's superficial qualities are stripped away. "You see the core ofhis being," as Gernand put it. Just so in alchemy, which was never really about turning rocks To view this image, please refer to the print version of this book 94 UNDERGROUND into nuggets but about spiritual transformation, revealing or releasing the gold "immanent in all things" (per mythologist Joseph Campbell). Poppo apparently doesn't want to discuss what's revealed. And true to form, current and ex-associates contradict each other in explaining his silence. Poppo is either: (a) not verbal; (b) unable to speak English; or (c) unwilling to explain himself. Clues in the program notes hardly make these rituals less cryptic. Last weekend's performance was "a ceremony of prayer for the internal and external in the human being, and at the same time, for the perpetual innocent play of infants." (Hymns courtesy of Damage, hardcore band "of instinctive vibration .") Goals this grandiose recall Jan Fabre, whose theater of perpetual menace, The Power of Theatrical Madness, swelled through on a sea of world tour hype just weeks ago. Power was a pretentious criticism of pretension, too formalist, too nihilistic, too militaristic, to compare to Poppo, who has simply decided to change the entire universe without forgetting to amaze us. March 1986 ...