The range of behavior our culture acknowledges as masculine might include both good and bad, but it’s still not very wide. So says Cynthia Oliver, a nationally-known choreographer based in Illinois.
Oliver has a young son, and she’s concerned about the images of masculinity that he and other men – particularly men of color – are fed by the media.
“My intimate knowledge of black men was disturbed by the narrow performances, [and the] presentation of conversations around what black masculinity is and can be,” she says. “And then also being the mother of a young boy, I wanted there to be more options for him, in terms of who he could be.”
For her new dance work, Oliver drew on her experience growing up in the U.S. Virgin Islands, which has its own set of conventions around gender presentation. Caribbean culture, for instance, calls a woman who exhibit traditionally “male” traits, like bravery or brashness, a “virago.”
The term is pejorative, but Oliver is reclaiming it. Virago-Man Dem explores what Oliver calls “the breadth of masculine performances, whether it’s by someone who is biologically male or not.” (“Dem” follows the Caribbean convention of pluralizing nouns by adding “them.”)
The work debuted in October 2017, at the prestigious Brooklyn Academy of Music, and has since toured to Philadelphia, Washington, D.C. and elsewhere. Four male performers, all African-American or Afro-Caribbean, use movement, song and spoken word to tell their stories and show that there are many ways to be masculine. “Each one is very particular and very different than the other,” says Oliver.
The show incorporates projected video animations and original music. Copious costume changes help express the various roles and personas the performers assume. “I wanted it to demonstrate a level of playfulness, a number of different characterizations – just the ability to be chameleon-like and shape-shifting,” Oliver says.
The show runs 75 minutes. Referencing her son, she says, “This was my sort of love letter to him and to all of the beautiful men in my life, to say ‘I know, and we all know, there’s so much more [to masculinity] than what gets presented.’”
Virago-Man Dem is performed Friday and Saturday at the Kelly-Strayhorn Theater, in East Liberty, as part of the KST Presents series. Tickets are “pay what makes you happy”; more information is available at the theater’s web site.
