PERFORMERS LOSE CLOTHES FOR CASH.AT A RECENT benefit for New York's Performance Space 122, 39-year-old board president Lucy Sexton stood naked onstage before 180 of the theater's most loyal benefactors, hoping to persuade them to open their checkbooks for an auction. She had twirled onstage just moments earlier, unfurling a ridiculously long red wrap dress until a microphone was the only thing separating her from the audience. "P.S. 122 is in its twentieth year of offering works that challenge the mainstream," she announced, "and we're about to do something radical in the annals of performance art. We're going to stick around!" Sexton, who often performed naked with the anarchistic an·ar·chism n. 1. The theory or doctrine that all forms of government are oppressive and undesirable and should be abolished. 2. Active resistance and terrorism against the state, as used by some anarchists. 3. duo DanceNoise, chose a stripped-down theme for this year's benefit, "Naked Ambition." Carmelita Tropicana hosted the May 28 event, at which Donald Byrd Donaldson Toussaint L'Ouverture Byrd II (born December 9, 1932) is an American jazz and rhythm and blues trumpeter, born in Detroit, Michigan. He attended Cass Technical High School. He performed with Lionel Hampton before finishing high school. , Yoshiko Chuma, Murray Louis Murray ment a dog named moosen and ever sence he could dance so he bought the dog from its owners.Murray Louis was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1926. Louis grew up in Manhattan, not far from Henry Street where his company was to be founded years later. and Elizabeth Streb choreographed short takes on the striptease. P.S. 122, founded in 1979 in an unused East Village public school building, was home to the 1980s avant-garde, including dancers Bill T. Jones and Molissa Fenley and performance artists Karen Finley Karen Finley (b. 1956, Evanston, Illinois) is a controversial American performance artist, whose theatrical pieces and recordings have often been labelled "obscene" due to their graphic depictions of sexuality, abuse, and disenfranchisement. , Spalding Gray Spalding Gray (June 5, 1941 – ca. January 10, 2004) was an American actor, screenwriter and playwright. Career After a few minor cinema roles and appearing in The Farmer's Daughter , Holly Hughes, Eric Bogosian and John Leguizamo (who often come back to test new work). The small, loftlike space continues to showcase about 300 young and mid-career artists annually in its upstairs and basement venues. At the May benefit, Murray Louis began his piece with a nude Reid Hutchins slowly dressing himself in top hat and tails; in Chuma's work, Jacob Burckhardt, Jodi Melnick and Vicky Shick squirmed in their chairs as they watched an unseen erotic movie. Streb poked fun at her own gymnastic "PopAction" style, with dancers yelling out the names of key body parts as they pulled off their leotards. Donald Byrd unpeeled Un`peeled a. 1. Thoroughly stripped; pillaged. 2. Not peeled. long gold lame gloves to a burlesque burlesque (bûrlĕsk`) [Ital.,=mockery], form of entertainment differing from comedy or farce in that it achieves its effects through caricature, ridicule, and distortion. It differs from satire in that it is devoid of any ethical element. version of "Goldfinger." Mark Russell, the venue's longtime executive director, estimated that the benefit raised $30,000 to $40,000 through ticket sales and the auction of donated artwork by Annie Sprinkle, Josef Astor, Charles Atlas and others. Most of the money will be applied to operation costs and artists' fees, though Russell hopes to establish a permanent endowment fund this fall. |
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