A testament to the fact that performance art needn’t employ a megaphone or other ostentatious devices to get its message across. Catherine Bay’s project of gun-toting Snow Whites is cunning, decisive and wonderfully subtle. It’s been a long while since I’ve seen anything so powerful in the realm of both performance and choreography.
On Friday night the Snow Whites invaded Sonia Rykiel’s clothing boutique in the sixth arrondissement (think Upper East Side), as Ms. Bay was invited as a part of Parcours Saint Germain, a swanky neighborhood fair of art exhibits. As the champagne-happy attendees (many of which strolled in for the free booze) perused the ultrachic fashion accessories, the pistol carrying Snow Whites wandered around creepily, like demented Disneyland Terminators.
In what was a very fine-tuned group improvisation, the Snow Whites performed off of loose scores: they chose between exhibiting a robotic surveillance over the crowd (just like the real security guards in the store), chatting to each other coyly, sipping on champagne (just like us), toying with their guns listlessly, and occasionally dropping down dead. The performers, all young, pretty-faced dancers, improvised with tact and subtlety. They all wore costumes and caps made of thin rubber which upon closer viewing were finely molded and beautifully objects themselves.
Through her performances, film, and in her Blanche Neige poem/manifesto, Bay messes with codes of representation and behavioral norms. (”the intimate versus the social body” she notes.) Blanche Neige is deeply critical and quietly rebellious. In these times of Homeland Security, American pop culture domination, and societal expectations of women, this work is powerful, fascinating and unnerving. Through these demented characters’ behavior, we realize that they are no more demented than we are- they simply choose to operate under different norms.
**Blanche Neige is coming to NYC’s French Institute / Alliance Francaise in the fall! Save the date!**
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