Join us as we celebrate the birthdays of NHQ’s Angeline Gragasin and Daniel Postilnik this Saturday, March 13, 2010 at the Archer Ballroom. Featuring live entertainment by ANTIBODY DANCE, VALIS, and DJs BITFUNK and BODYWALLET! All we wanna do is zooma zoom zoom zoom and a boom boom, ya hurr?

@ the ARCHER BALLROOM
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Doors 8:30PM

With special guests:

9:30pm: ANTIBODY DANCE
performing the Chicago debut of VACA SACRA

VACA SACRA a performance by ANTIBODY DANCE
Choreographed by Adam Rose in collaboration with Silvita Diaz Brown and Craig Donavin. Sound design by Adam Rose.

Characters:
La Monja (the Nun): Silvita Diaz Brown
El Vaquero (the Cowboy): Craig Donavin
El Hombre de Negocios (the Businessman): Adam Rose

“Vaca Sacra” is a work for three dancers who embody a nun, a cowboy, and a businessman. The sound design and choreography steal elements from Mexican and American culture to describe neither, instead creating a separate world from distorted fragments of each. The result is something like a southwest noir. The Antibody mirrors processes of cultural exchange and fragementation initiated by the global market, devouring cultures in order to feed itself. In this destructive and creative process, occult connections emerge, between Hollywood and Bollywood, Christianity and cannibalism, Baroque master/slave relationships and contemporary politics. The climax of the work is an invocation of Kali danced by the figure of a nun holding a skull.

10pm: VALIS
ftg. members of Clique Talk
Dark ‘n Sticky Synthpop

11:30pm: DJ sets by BITFUNK
and BODYWALLET
Dance Party!

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Beer and refreshments will be served. Please also BYOB!

Attire: Festive, danceable

RSVP

by March 11
Please let us know if you are bringing a guest. This is a private event.

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Please bring the gift of goodwill toward all men and women.

She only exists for me in a few low-fi videos on YouTube, but her dance stylings are so ferocious that she has propelled herself out of the two dimensional video world and landed among the mythic dance legends that are orbiting around us, constantly bringing the heat. Think Rosie Perez in the intro of Do The Right Thing mixed with Elizabeth Berkely in Showgirls. When people watch her videos, I think they react to the absurdity of the choreography combined with her unabashed full throttle execution of it. There is nothing timid about her hip action, nearly exploding out of her American Gladiator dance panties.

I’ve done some light research on Sara and there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot on the Internet concerning her place of origin or why she was on so many Italian variety shows. It also makes me wonder why we don’t have more ridiculous and high production value variety shows on television. Nevermind American Idol, I’m talking Telemundo-style crazy-show stuff to match the media circus that we already think is normal. We could handle it. Sara Carlson should come back and infuse American television audiences with the same sense of wonderment as she did while performing amongst talented crab-scuttling contortionists and virtuoso violinists for Europe in the 80′s.

All we need to know about Sara Carlson is what she has bestowed upon us: her Dance Legacy. Which will supply me with moves to bust out at parties, or alone in my apartment–which seems to be her new direction. It seems she’s recently taken a note from the Whirling Dervishes (mystical dancers who stand between the material and cosmic world, representing the earth’s revolution around the sun).

That’s a perfect way to describe her.

Over the summer, all of us at the NHQ became obsessed with Charo, née María Rosario Pilar Martínez Molina Moquiere de les Esperades Santa Ana Romanguera y de la Najosa Rasten. “DANTHE… Jooth ay leetle beet klohther!” was on everybody’s lips, and all of our eyes on her glorious tits. Reading her Wikipedia article was a revelation in and of itself, but YouTubing her rarer appearances made her all the more alluring.

Not only was Charo NOT just the blonde bimbo of whom I had only the vaguest childhood recollections (Hollywood Squares), she was a musical prodigy whose career began when she was “discovered” by Xavier Cugat, that irresistible Spanish bandleader whose work was most recently re-popularized by Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar Wai in films such as 2046, In The Mood for Love, and Days of Being Wild. After watching the next video, you too will realize why we find the winner of the award for Cugat’s most vivacious fourth wife (she was just 15 when he married her at age 66) equally irresistible (she’s the first guest, so don’t skip ahead):

WOW now that’s some RAW TALENT! Ain’t no way around it. No true space cadet could ever have the mellifluous motor control and pure power of expression to which we sensual creatures are all beholden. Likewise take note of one of Colombian pop princess Shakira’s earlier appearances in American-made media.

Besides the obvious similarities of Spanish and the Sex Appeal, in these videos, both Shakira and Charo are also presented (are they presenting themselves?) in ways that highlight their talents as musicians: both women are wielding guitars (Charo throughout, Shakira mostly towards the end). The fact that both are singing in their native tongue is not to be overlooked; these songs were originally written in Spanish, and are therefore inevitably more poetic than what would later pass as popular music. For both women, this would mean singing English-language songs whose only merits are the unexpected level of amusement one derives from appreciating their absurd vapidity. See below:

Not only is the music less musical (I’d like to see someone try and argue Shakira’s coquettish wolf howl as superior to her robust natural singing voice), but their visual presentation is much more contrived and hyper-sexualized, and much less unique to the performers themselves. Charo was a classically trained Spanish guitarist and flamenco dancer, as evidenced by only her earliest televised appearances. You would never know, though, after seeing her jiggle and giggle her way through The Loveboat theme. Likewise, Shakira is a former musical prodigy and accomplished multi-instrumentalist, capable of expressing so much more than one might imagine after watching her writhe and thrust her way around a cage (a life-sized geode, a crowded club, etc.) with…

…on her lips. Also capable of processing complex intellectual activities, such as studying history at UCLA, or speaking at Oxford University about her work as an educator and philanthropist. But you might not notice, what with all that other stuff coming out of her mouth on the radio and in her videos. The same could be said of Charo.

However, it wouldn’t be fair to find fault with either of these women for merely riding the great [single] white [male] wave of convention (cowabunga, dude!) to stardom… Rather, we make and appreciate the distinction between the before and after, taking special care to celebrate what once was and is no longer. What once was María Rosario Pilar Martínez Molina Moquiere de les Esperades Santa Ana Romanguera y de la Najosa Rasten is now just “Cuchi-Cuchi.” In the beginning, there was Shakira. In the end, there was Charo. What does it matter? It’s all the same to us if it’s all the same to them.