Dead Bird's Boozy Japanese Vacation

"Thrashoholic" by Dead Bird Movement. Photo by Tim Summers.

All right, so touring Thrashoholic has got to be anything but relaxing, but dancer/choreographer Jessie Smith (a founding member of Implied Violence and the artistic director of Dead Bird Movement) is taking the brutal endurance piece on the road to Japan starting Dec. 16 in Nagoya (see here for the full tour schedule). Anyone with friends, co-workers, or acquaintances in Japan should be getting a hold of them now to have them block off dates.

I caught Thrashoholic back in August, as part of a double-feature of Dead Bird pieces in a Sodo loft off S. Hanford St. A duet with drummer Jeffrey Mitchell, Thrashoholic is an exploration of the self-destructive cycle of binge drinking. Mitchell, on a full drum-kit, launches into an off-kilter rhythm or a jazzy vamp as Smith begins to move, only to devolve into ever faster and heavier industrial style pounding as her movements grow more violent until, both having reached temporary exhaustion, they stop, leaving a pregnant silence punctuated only by their panting. And then the process repeats, each time driving farther and harder, until Smith's smirking look of defiance at Mitchell gradually wilts into a pathetic desperation, pleading him to make the punishment stop.

But the piece's true brilliance occurs half-way through, when Smith stops and takes a series of five big shots of Maker's Mark whiskey in quick succession, before returning to the process. Shock-value aside, it's a daring (and dangerous) artistic choice. Afterward, Thrashoholic stops being a simple conceptual interpretation and becomes a dialogue between the dance artist and her own body. Vomiting (or coming close), Smith proceeds through each subsequent movement struggling to maintain control while her body involuntarily reacts to being poisoned, until she simply can't go on, and is escorted offstage by Mitchell to purge.

For the audience, it's one of the most visceral and dramatic live experiences you can have. Watching Smith force herself to pound shot after shot, I found myself wanting to call out to her to stop, and as the piece forced itself to its inevitable conclusion, I watched in astonished horror, hand over jaw-dropped mouth. I've seldom seen a work that so stunningly finds a vocabulary to explore the complexity of the human body, nor one that engages the audience on such a profoundly human level, and manages to communicate so much through such a seemingly simple conceit.