Mein Hair
2009 video booth: wood, fabric, TV, coin-operator, DVD player and color video 4:00 min.
Mein Hair is an offering of mystery, homage, and entertainment. The single-person occupancy structure provides a fragile privacy, permeable by sound and speculation. Inside, the viewer makes a choice and a small sacrifice to deposit a quarter in order to accept the experience. Once admission has been paid, the video begins. As I lipsynch and perform the original choreography to Liza Minnelli's "Mein Herr" number in Bob Fosse's Cabaret (1972), a transformation occurs. I slip from one assumed persona to another, with body hair as the wavering threshold between. The piece combines the erotic peep show and the drag tradition, positing that sexy can and does have more faces, more power, and more laughs than it is often given credit for. Seeking wisdom in the body, I look to the dance of a most strange and extraordinary patron saint of sex positive show-biz for the proof.
