I first met the anonymous performance artist known as Narcissister in 2010, when I was trying to get back into dancing after a flirtation with giving it up. Feeling stifled by my years of Irish dance training, I thought the antidote might be to try something radically new. And so I found myself at PMT House of Dance one day, auditioning to be part of a small army of masked backup dancers, or Sisters, in Narcissister’s new neo-burlesque production, This Masquerade.
As a performer in that work, in two runs at different venues, I got to see Narcissister’s singular world up close: the feats of homespun engineering that are her costumes, designed to come off in elaborate stripteases; her precise and acrobatic choreography, which often incorporates, mind-bendingly, the birthing of objects from her vagina; her transformation into, and dismantling of, archetypal female characters, always anchored by the wardrobe staples of a mannequin mask and a merkin (a wig for pubic hair). Throughout her body of work, eroticism, humor, and a love for low-fi spectacle underpin sharp and subversive commentaries on gender, race, sexuality, domesticity, and capitalist consumption. It is always a thrill to see what she’ll dream up next.