Dirty Dishy Divine. - DTW's Bessie Schonberg Theater, New York, New York - dance reviews

Dance Magazine, May, 1994 by Julinda Lewis

Tiye Giraud's surrealistic Dirty Dishy Divine, inspired by the stories of Giraud's traveling musician mother, Annabelle July-Huddleston, blends elements of early 1900s tent shows with contemporary performance art, borrows language, characters, and format from minstrel shows and the circus, and drives it all with a musical melange of vocalizations, jazz, percussion, and blues.

Composer-writer Giraud, choreographer Christina Jones, performers Tandum Lett (in a tattered clown outfit), and Robin Burdulis (the lone white performer) moan, sing, and laugh. They are "ravin' women in a state of exotic intoxication," and musician Ayodele Aubert wisely keeps his distance.

Dirty Dishy Divine, at its core, is about African-American survival. There is Po' Paufina, whose encounter with a snake while relieving herself in the bushes led to a career as an exotic dancer, an attractive freak who turned misfortune into profit. And Divinadora is a seer, a "two-headed woman" whose mission is to restore self-esteem and empower the powerless.

There are many noteworthy ingredients here: any segment with Giraud singing or playing one of her myriad instruments; Burdulis playing the kazoo, bones, or "gut bucket" (tin tub); Aubert's versatile musicianship; Jones's lively choreography with its historical references.

Notwithstanding all this - and direction by Laurie Carlos, whose presence as a performer was missed - Dirty Dishy Divine was but a shadow of what it could have been. Giraud, Jones, Carlos, and Aubert have worked together before, have at various times been associated with the remarkable, provocative Urban Bush Women, and are intimately familiar with performance that blends traditional African and African-American art forms with contemporary movement and themes. But compare Dirty Dishy Divine with Donald Byrd's 1991 Minstrel Show; the latter successfully harnessed its anger and vitality within a theatrical framework, yet still managed to stimulate and discomfit its audience. That quality was missing from Dirty Dishy Divine - at least at this stage of its development.