A Black Burlesque.

Reggie Wilson's Fist and Heel Performance Group DTW's Bessie Schonberg Theater February 9-12, 1995 Reviewed by Julinda Lewis

An invitation to spend an evening in a burlesque house reveals that beneath the glittery elegance is a funky quartet in black lace, garters, and bow ties. Their lazy, languid bumps and grinds are just another commercial offering aimed at attracting the highest bidder, and the wonderfully bizarre Rhetta Aleong is the saleswoman. Welcome to Reggie Wilson's A Black Burlesque.

Having packed her substantial girth into a longline bra and tutu, Aleong milks a blues number about a trombone-playing man for all the double entendre it's worth. The bald and beautiful Melissa Wynn, who never stays onstage long enough to satisfy, vamps as a dominatrix who overpowers the all-too-willing Aleong.

Drawing on his recent studies of the blues and the spiritual cultures of the African diaspora, Wilson creates interesting juxtapositions of popular and trance-inducing movement. They're accompanied by infrequently heard music by Bessie Smith, Louis Armstrong, Dr. Oloh and his Jazz Band, and others. The first half of the evening culminates, suddenly, in a lynching.

The second part slips between the realms of the worldly (flesh) and the otherworldly (spirit). To ease the transition, audience members returning from intermission participate in a ritual handwashing. Hymns like "Who Loves My Jesus" and "Keep the Old Lamp Trimmed and Burnin' (See What the Lord Has Done)" pull the dancers into a shuffling pattern or shouting ring. African tradition meets postmodern artist with a bang as Wilson, dressed in black lace, anoints his congregants under pulsing strobe lights and pumped-up music, heavy on the bass.

The eclectic company of dancers, shouters (singers), and others whose skills are less easily defined, has a core group consisting of Wilson, Aleong, Wynn, Sham Mosher, Terry Hollis, and Edisa Weeks, who somehow manage to keep the audience focused even when there is nothing recognizable on the horizon. The individual elements may be familiar, but Wilson imbues them with a sense of mystery that is at once as exhilarating as it is unsettling.