Modern dance is so 20th century. Or is it the new black? Last Friday night, choreographer Autumn Mist Belk, proved her style of dance as fresh, provocative and au courant.
Traveling up from Raleigh, North Carolina, Belk’s dance company, Code f.a.d. Company, presented threes pieces of a larger work-in-progress entitled Fashion Briefs at the McGuffey Art Center. "Fashion" was literal: Each performance featured the lives and works of famous fashion designers Christian Louboutin, Oscar de la Renta and Gucci. For the completed work, Belk anticipates 12 or more clips from the fashion world, culminating in an evening-length performance to be premiered in December.
The 15-minute preview, hosted by Miki Liszt Dance Company, piqued appetites for the larger work with a down and dirty crash course guide to the fashion world. The performances were laced with runway glares, stomping high heels, and the ever-present tension of competition and mistrust. The final performance—based on shocking Gucci family history—ends with a reenactment of the murder of Maurizio Gucci, allegedly arranged by his former wife. In a battle of disputed share holdings, the three scowling dancers circle around one another, tumbling and leaping through the air with poise while still “watching their backs,” as Belk put it.
While some of the pieces openly exhibit the darker face of fashion, even the seemingly just-for-fun fashion has a flipside. “The first one is about shoes,” Belk says of her performance based on designer Christian Louboutin. “We’re acting like we’re all that because we have these awesome red-soled heels.” But, even a pure fashion indulgence reveals a more complex meaning. Of the two dancers on stage, one of them “isn’t real,” Belk says. She explains that one is “an alter-ego reflecting that piece of [the dancer’s] personality she didn’t know was there.” Fashion is not only a game of flaunting, she described, but also one of concealing and masking.
In addition to movement, Belk features an original musical score composed by Raliegh musician G. Todd Buker. She also plans to incorporate film into the completed performance. A self-proclaimed multimedia dance company (f.a.d. stands for film, art, and dance), Belk has always sought to combine various artistic mediums to create original and relevant art.
This piece’s relevancy? Obsession and indulgence. Like her 2009 piece Indulge—which exposed a world dominated by business, food, technology, eternal love, and high fashion—Fashion Briefs examines the roles of materiality, greed, desire and suspicion in modern society. Belk executes these performances with runway precision, attitude and overwhelming elegance.