Dance Reviews : Women in Conflict at National Theatre Fest

Costume transformations by all five artists on the Friday program of the National Women’s Theatre Festival helped them embody the conflicting roles of women in contemporary life--and their dreams as well.

In “Give Me Grace,” Anna Brown walked on to the stage of Freud Playhouse, UCLA, carrying a 6-foot-tall feminist cross: woman-shaped, wallpapered with girlie photos and embellished with baby dolls and ropes of pearls.

“What I want to know,” she asked plaintively, “is where did I get this and how do I get rid of it?”

Her wry, sitcom-style parody of Catholic ritual may have sidestepped that question but it addressed the prevailing attitudes toward women that have excluded them from religious power.

However, as Diviana Ingravallo demonstrated in the first section of her “Naked Woman,” the ancient (pre-Christian, pre-patriarchal) religions can still be seized as forces for empowerment. Slides by Tracy Mostovoy provided a pithy accompaniment to this deliriously outspoken extended solo performance.

In the roles of stripper, whore and, especially, the outrageous “snakewoman with poisonous breasts . . . created by man’s fear,” Ingravallo probed the power and debasement of sexuality. This theme also emerged in Rachel van Dessel’s untitled dance solo through the evolution of stereotypes into archetypes: so-called feminine grace yielding to something more primal.

Out of mincing, quasi-Japanese steps and stances, for instance, Van Dessel launched a celebration of spinal mobility that showed us the physical resilience beneath the lotus-blossom cliches.

Resilience also proved the key issue of Betty Gonzalez Nash’s dance-with-text “Hey, I Don’t Need You, I Don’t Need Anybody.” Surviving all kinds of earthquakes without denying her fears, Nash’s character made a case for accepting insecurity as a fact of life. Along the way, she interacted with musician Vinny Golia in episodes that deliberately undercut the bravado of the work’s title.

In an evening that included revelations of full nudity as well as fake genitalia, Julie Laffin created the most startling body-display in her solo “Redress.”

Winding masking tape tightly around her legs, hips, waist and chest, she at first seemed to be mummifying herself. But, with a little red paint she turned the tape cocoon into a strapless evening gown--and her persona from that of a bright, self-absorbed young woman to a show-biz glamour queen mindlessly belting out “My Man.”

Supplementing the performances: Mostovoy’s mock-porn “Succubus” video, on view in the lobby at intermission.