The cloning game

Suzanne Miller offers a self-reflection

by WALTER KRAJEWSKI

Back in 1994, men were busy attacking a storefront window on Mont-Royal Avenue. Some banged the window, others thumped it with an umbrella and once the window was even smashed.

The object of their rage? Simply ten women holding hands in a line and posing still. As Suzanne Miller, creator of the event titled The Weight of a Hand explains, the women involved will never forget the experience. "Some of them were traumatized and left before the week was up, but others were compelled to return. Many of the women who passed by wanted to join in," Miller says. "They could feel the strength of that chain of women. That simple staging certainly became politicized."

Obviously not every man who saw the window display felt rage, but it's a telling point that a transient audience became drawn into the performance and completed it by their response.

Miller's new creation is Blood Relative (I wish you a long life), which she dances solo on an 8-by-20-foot floor mirror. Since dancers use wall-length mirrors throughout their careers, this staging device should have posed no challenge. Miller's experience proved otherwise.

"After the mirrors arrived, I was apprehensive. I found that I couldn't look at myself, so I fantasized by dressing up, pretending I was not really me," Miller says. "Eventually I could strip down to black-and-white basics and create my self-duet, working with the separation and completion of myself in the mirror image."

Her second presentation, Careless Love, switches to a lighter, indeed racier duet. It opens with partner James Viveiros on top of a stepladder, pouring water down his throat while attempting to recite corny lyrics such as, "Careless love, you broke my heart/You butted your cigarette on my ashtray heart." Standing below him, Miller is showered with both the water and the lyrics.

It gets crazier. If you never realized that a blowtorch can be a phallic symbol, nor considered that promiscuity can be protected by plastic, then you definitely should see Careless Love. Suzanne Miller promises to make broken hearts hilarious.

Suzanne Miller performs at Espace Tangente, March 27-30. $15, students $12. See dance listings for showtimes