If you are expecting dance, you’ll be sorely disappointed with Wendy Houstoun’s solo performance which only features a minimal portion of dancing in her experimental, left-wing leaning performance lecture 50 Acts, but her movements have a clear focus from her performer training which makes her engaging to watch. This is a “spirited retaliation against ageism” and taking it as it is, a series of quirky and original “acts” which come together in humorous fashion to comment on our culture and her “beef” with society, it is interesting and poignant.
Houstoun plays around with notions of performance, humorously narrating her own movements which can be as short as a few seconds and constitute one of the 50 acts. Further down the line she spends several minutes relentlessly twirling in a circle with arms outstretched despite being shot down repeatedly, like a clay pigeon, to the sound of a rifle. There is something both funny and tragic about the way she keeps falling but maintains her twirl, sending out messages of hopes being shattered and dreams being pummeled as the years increase.
This crushing imagery is again prominent in the nihilistic smashing of vinyl records with a hammer. As she follows sheet music, the hammer falls down upon the disks as if orchestrating a musical crescendo. This needless violent act is again simplistically devastating yet funny, and makes much stronger political points than some of her more long-winded poetry recitals. It is the simplest “acts” that toy with the audience’s emotions most effectively, and her physical performance is certainly stronger than her auditory one.
