Making Magic Through Queer PerforMANCE - Corian Ellisor’s ‘Charmed Ones’

Arts

May 25

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A few blocks before my boyfriend and I arrive at the theater, we run into two dear friends on their way to the same show. After masked hugs we make our way to the parking lot behind 7 Stages where we are given red carnations and rainbow bracelets by the kindly box office crew and head toward the large audience gathered outside. More friends and community members to run into and catch up with, some I haven’t seen in years. The experience is both moving and jarring. I used to experience this sort of thing all the time, bumping into friends at art events, catching up and kiki-ing, and yet this hasn’t really happened in over a year. The coming together of community in, around, and for art is central to my experience of Corian Ellisor’s dance work Charmed Ones, performed April 28th, 29th, May 1st, and 2nd at 7 Stages in Atlanta, GA.

When I think of Corian, I think of community. Corian was one of the first people I danced with when I was just getting involved with dance in Atlanta in 2012 where he was already a central presence. Alongside his role as pillar for the dance community, Corian is also crucial to the Atlanta queer scene with his drag persona Ella/Saurus/Rex. These two communities (with plenty of overlap) are fed, nourished, and inspired by Corian’s creative drive and heart felt presence. I felt this all deeply in his most recent dance work.

The set for the piece is centered around a large rectangle of dirt on the concrete of the 7 Stages parking lot, delineating an earthen stage, an empty garden bed with sticks of incense smoking around the periphery. Circling round the dirt stage is a giant wreath of sticks with red string and red carnations woven into it, creating a nest that the stage is settled in the center of. Behind the dirt stage, as a large-scale sculptural backdrop, there are the remains of a large fallen tree, also decorated in red string and flowers. This simple ornamentation of the barren, a crafty celebration of the broken, suits the themes of queer magic in the work. Much like drag, there is an approach that creates maximal theatrical effect via minimal simple means.

While still catching up with old friends, I notice the piece beginning out of the corner of my eye. The performers slowly appear like spirits drifting outside the dirt stage. Angelically dressed in long white t-shirts cut into sleeveless tunics, bare legged with white underwear and white sandals, Alex Abarca, Leo Briggs, Patrick Otsuki, and Corian Ellisor begin the meditative ritual of Charmed Ones.

The top of the performance completely blurs my sense of time. The dancers move confidently in slow motion, ceremoniously floating about the space, splashing water from a giant chalice and removing their sandals before stepping on the earthen floor. They create a somber court dance with their graceful movement and direct eye contact, bringing an ancient magic to Corian’s great sense for contemporary aesthetics. Once on the dirt stage, the movement very slowly picks up momentum as the performers transform through static postures, creating ephemeral living monuments for their cause. The use of posture brings to mind sculpture as well as the tradition of vogueing; the taking on of shapes of elevated beauty standards by the othered subject position of queer persons, accessing the power of fantasy to transform one’s reality.

The dance builds in momentum. The dancers become increasingly dirty as the movement becomes larger and more athletic and they throw their bodies in and out of the floor, The movement itself speaks directly to resilience as the consummate dancers continually bounce back from the movement journeys that they find themselves on. Gently, campy pop vocabulary mixes with the more abstract contemporary dance forms. The stately ritual makes space for humor and spunk, winks and jokes for the audience (and for the performers themselves) creating necessary levity in this celebration of queer strength. Charmed Ones has an enchanting arch, moving from a stoic sense of liturgy to a feeling of candid intimacy, a serious ritual as party, a spell cast with fun.

Throughout the piece, the individual identities of the uniformly dressed performers becomes clearer and clearer. Each performer's distinct strengths and personalities have room to shine: Alex’s fearless abandon, Patrick’s coy mystery, Leo’s grounded elegance. All the while Corian’s role as director is woven in and out of the piece. Ptar Flamming’s mysterious and ever shifting sound for the piece gorgeously adds to the palate of Charmed Ones. The score drifts from ambient sound, to spoken word, to more beat driven dance tracks. Poet (and WUSSY editor) Nicholas Goodly contributes a recording of a powerful poem they wrote to the altar of the work. The poem reinforces the themes of queer resilience, the complex amalgam of grit and fabulousness we become as queer people. The sound score includes developmental conversations with the cast about the work while Corian performs the role of director in real time, revealing the making of within the final result. I love these meta elements that fully display the power dynamics of the group scattered throughout the piece. From the refined unfolding of dance phrase work to moments of snapping for each other and slapping their own asses, the performers of Charmed Ones take these classical and pop influences, smartly deconstruct and put them back together, and share much about themselves and the importance of queer sensibilities in our world through the process.

As I watch these performers I realize that we (as audience members) can no longer separate our understanding of a performer's identity from that performer while we witness them move through the shape of a performance. I am privileged to know, to varying degrees of intimacy, the performers that Corian worked with on this show, a privilege I recognize not everyone came to the theater with. However, through the language in and around the piece and the dancers’ performance itself, it is the identities, the personalities, the histories of these humans that became meaningful material for me alongside the formal choices they are making together. No longer can a performance be read merely by its compositional qualities, yes, these are of interest, but only in relationship to the people taking up the chosen forms. We are not just bodies, we are somehow much more than that. Corian and the cast of Charmed Ones bring their whole selves, their great technical prowess as well as their lived human experience to the stage to create a mesmerizingly powerful performance.

Once the show ends it is more beautiful social interaction with the vibrant audience and performers of the work. We smile and laugh in the springtime sunshine with our red carnations and rainbow friendship bracelets as we awkwardly and eagerly reemerge into the space of collectivity we have been so deeply missing. This performance acted as an important turning point for me in the pandemic. Thank goodness for Corian as magnet for this familial gathering, bringing folks together to celebrate the necessity of queer fantasy to life in all of its messy and wonderful forms.

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Erik Thurmond is an Atlanta based artist, teacher, and writer. He is on instagram: @actionboardservices and so is his band who he loves: @purepandemia

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