Mama Anabella

Distance / decay / by Pioneers Go East Collective
Anabella Lenzu, choreographer/performance artist
Gian Marco Riccardo Lo Forte, director & filmmaker
LaMama Experimental Theatre Club
New York, New York
May 8, 2026
--- By Tom Phillips 

In the unlikely event that women ever achieve equal rights in America, someone should put up a statue of Anabella Lenzu. In her new solo, she dances the full scope of humanity in female form.  

Distance /decay / begins in captivity. To a sound track of solitary, sad poetry by the late Argentine feminist Alejandra Pizarnik, Lenzu adds the scratch of a live microphone on her tight sequined party dress. She circles her breasts and digs into her belly, searching for the life within. She strips off the glitz, down to a leotard and bare legs, but then has to tear up a series of pictures and diagrams that cover her torso and face. Gaining strength with each false image that falls to the floor, Lenzu picks up a huge megaphone, shouts into it, but abruptly gives up and covers her head with it.

What follows is a demonstration of the power of dance drama. Lenzu dons a deep red cape and performs a slow, fierce tango. Then she straps her legs like a Roman gladiator and marches with soaring battements across the stage, slashing the air with her cape like a bullfighter. Rocked back in our seats, struck dumb, we watch as she exits and a minute later returns with a sweet smile and a modest bow—once again a mother, teacher, artist and friend..

A double immigrant from Argentina and Italy, Lenzu radiates the warrior ethos of ancient Rome and the steely dignity of flamenco and the bull ring, without losing a drop of her maternal warmth and intelligence. Grazie, Anabella. We get it.

Masculine Feminine Vangeline

 MAN WOMAN 
Directed, choreographed, and performed by Vangeline
Costumes by Machine Dazzle
Music by Ray Barragan Sweeten
Lighting by Ayumu "Poe" Saegusa
LaMama Moves! Festival at LaMama Experimental Theater, New York
April 18, 2026

-- By Tom Phillips 

Butoh artiste Vangeline continues to amaze and delight.  Last year she was synching brain waves with a male Japanese dancer in a piece (which I didn’t see) called Man/Woman. This year she has dispensed with punctuation and partner, and become a complete being —male and female, animal, vegetable and mineral, down to earth and out of time. She calls it Man Woman.

This world premiere began with an image of woman weighed down with the colossal couture of a male-dominated world. All that’s visible of her is a pretty face encased in an enormous wad of robes, ruffles, and feathers – a trophy queen topped with a fanned-out black cockade, imprisoned by imperial edict. Left alone, she wrinkles her nose, puckers her chin – then discovers her hands amid the feathers, and tortuously works herself free, limb by limb.