As I sat in the tiny black box theater at The Producer's Club watching my old friend, Lori Sommer, perform her one-woman show for an intimate crowd, I realized this: You can sometimes know someone for years without ever fully knowing their "story"; the volume of life experiences that shape their character, personality, fears and dreams. Sometimes the success you see has been molded by adversity and their own resilience after deep hurt or trauma.
Six fearless and powerful dancers articulated my story with unflinching emotion through ingeniously conceived weavings of contemporary dance and the added element of four vertical poles which became animate representations of the dancer's own personal struggles, their source of longing, or their hope.
This small cast of 7 performers (6 guys, 1 girl) left no trace of being mere mortals like the rest of us. These athletes/acrobats/dancers/artists push themselves physically beyond what seems humanly possible. In fact, I think they just may be the forgotten mutants from the X-Men series. Whatever their reason for being so insanely gifted, fearless and sculpted to physical perfection, I couldn't help but think that these people have absolutely no problems getting laid! (insert twinge of jealousy).
Talent has always been a major turn-on for me. It even has the power to bump someone up from a “7” in appearance straight up to a “10” and make me feel unworthy of their love. This is true of the Off-Broadway sensation, "Voca People" at The Westside Theater in Times Square. I could care less that these "Voca People" are odd-looking aliens having just arrived on planet Earth via space ship.
Fuerza Bruta provides a highly visceral, atypical theater experience featuring nymph-like ladies swimming in a transparent pool suspended overhead, a treadmill built for five that catapults performers over the edge and a billowing metallic-silver curtain that instantly transforms the theater into a futuristic space.
