Antonio Ramos and the Gang Bangers presented Mira El! last week at the Abrons Arts Center Underground Theater as part of the 2016 American Realness Festival. Mira El! commands the audience’s attention and prompts an investigation of identity, intimacy, and isolation. The dancers boldly display their naked bodies in the face of moral codes and social norms, questioning our virtual existences that are often constructed by false or contrived circumstances and appearances.
The title anticipates our natural inclination to look away. It tells us to look at the dance and the dancers, naked, in all their expansive movement, pelvic thrusts, lunges, and leg lifts. At the risk of crossing a line with nakedness, Mira El! dares us to look at him, her, and ourselves. When we look at ourselves in the face of bouncing genitalia, we might be able to question our own reactions and the way we as a society view think about the body—in all its less than attractive and smelly functionalities, namely sex. Looking around the audience, some seemed disturbed, some merely uncomfortable, and others, like myself, found humor in moments such as a mock serial ejaculation when several of the dancers backed another against a wall, stripped off their clear raincoats and hurled them at the isolated dancer sprawled against the wall turning his face side to side.
Opening the 45 minute-long work, Antonio Ramos enters the stage naked but for a garter belt with straps hanging free, a clear raincoat and sunglasses. He gives his cell phone to an audience member, requesting that she video record a dance sequence performed to the sound of a buzzing bee. Ramos attitudinizes sweeping and angular movements feigning seriousness for the camera. While the audience might not know yet how to view his nakedness, his postural phrasing towards the camera prompts the audience to look at him. By introducing the virtual world with live video recording by cell phone, he reminds us that rarely do we communicate our identity in its less than “perfect” manner. Often times, what appears -- for instance, on our social profiles -- is not at all a true reflection of reality.
After his beginning sequences, Ramos takes on the role of a drag queen and queen bee figure among the rest of the dancers. She is dressed in gorgeous fringe arm bands, extra-tall sparkly fuchsia heels, a wig, and hyperbolically fake lips. Throughout the remainder of the work, she hosts an absurd picnic that gradually becomes, like her lips, excessive—who brings a tea kettle and a Christmas tree to a picnic? Yet, the picnic seems fun. At times nearing the work’s close, dancers take small breaks and join in on the picnic. At the actual closing, the cast quickly opens up more tablecloths on the floor and invites the audience to join, passing around a large bucket of fried chicken, proclaiming, “It’s fresh!” Still naked, amidst the smell of sweaty naked bodies, several dancers (having worked up quite the appetite) speak and mingle with audience members as they munch on chicken, pie, or whatever leftover picnic food is available. We may be wondering, isn't this too much? Am I too close? Should I look away? But perhaps that’s the point.
