HULA, PART I (RIDER)
In Hula Joan Dickinson invited the heavens, and disaster, in from the go–and the fact that the heavens complied with her calculated, wonderful risk–made her triumph even greater. Hula, with its haunting beauty and weird ironies, was simply sublime.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Unlike most performers in town, Dickinson has steadfastly refused easy punch lines (though her performances are usually hilarious, albeit black as hell), easy references to pop culture (choosing a strangely nonpolemical feminism as a kind of philosophical starting point), or any kind of catering to the audience’s presumed limitations. She means to stretch us–our imagination, our senses, even our patience–and she does.
Hula opens a little before dusk with a barefoot Dickinson standing on a short platform and turned away from the audience. She’s facing a wall, but the audience looks out at a skyline of dead factories and other loftlike buildings. Over her head hangs a huge white ball. She’s wearing the black-mesh vest and an unearthly headdress that resembles rags, bandages, perhaps even intestines. The headdress coils around her to the floor and disappears like a snake behind a pair of huge white screens to the left of the audience.
As the text comes to a close (with an ending written by Dickinson), the image on the ball becomes clear: it’s the Gemini astronauts, bouncing like happy elves on the moon. Finally Dickinson drops from the platform, executing a slow-motion hula dance as she moves offstage.
