CINDeReLLA and HANSel/GReTel

In the world of performance, there’s not a lot that hasn’t already been done. At the
same time, there’s a lot that is not often done very well. Between this binary is the incredibly non-binary concept of the “sharty” – a SHow that’s also a pARTY. Yes, there are loft parties, dinner theaters, and immersive productions, but these operations still implement measures of control over their audiences.

HANSeL/GReTeL, comprised of Delilah Friedler and Laura Hunter Petree, chooses a fairy tale to thematically govern the evening. The rest is up to however the
comingling of performer and spectator manages to merge into pure being. CINDeReLLA took place at Rubulad in Bushwick. You stumble in from a baron stretch of Melrose Street into a haze of colorful lights and people dressed up to varying degrees and evocations. There’s a bar, a station for Tarot readings, and a clothing popup by Vers BK. These, however, are mere emanations of the sharty’s core, situated inside on the dance floor.

By the time I entered, Hunter and Delilah were well underway with the meat of the
evening. Being someone who does not often attend dance parties due to social and sensory sensitivities, I immediately latched onto Hunter’s Laurie Anderson-esque delivery of a modernized narration of Cinderella, relentlessly told in the second person, casting each and every listener as the protagonist.

Performers emerged to illustrate key scenes in the tale to Delilah’s referential tapestry of beats. Klondyke, a towering figure donning Insane Clown Posse makeup, embodied the wicked stepmother, lip-syncing to glitchy laughter. Julz Romell and Kevin García brought ball culture, crafting a call-and-response chant out of “bibbidy bobbidy boo” as jubilant vogueing portrayed our collective transformation. Buffy played Cinderella in moments of inner turmoil and conflict, stumbling wistfully with a drink and wandering with a candle.

Samora La Perdida conversely performed her euphoria, only to have an iPhone alarm signal the stroke of midnight. Klondyke returned as both stepmother and prince, invoking Korn to underpin the epilogue’s foot fixation.

Despite the manifestations, Hunter’s narration is decisive. You have no actual fairy godmother. You don’t need a prince. You don’t even need a narrator. Our job, both in this event and in life, is none other than to live. In perhaps its queerest move, the notion of transformation is sobered into one of self-realization in a context predicated on each of us being extensions of one another.

EYE ON THE ARTS, NY — Jonathan Matthews-Guzman