Rebecca Furious reveals her true identity – a Chilean emigre working without a green card. As she dances, titillating the clients with her chain, she says what is on her mind but never revealed – her anxiety about the molesting of her younger sister by her white schoolmates. This anxiety gives her performance an adrenaline rush that drives the men crazy.

 

 

Rebecca Furious

WOW Festival, NYC (1981)

In a sharp role reversal, the go-go bar clients are represented by one dimensional figures that signify “silent decor”. The dancers, by contrast, are the ones who talk and have opinions.

I create an illusion of 50′s glamor, dancing to Sinatra’s “New York, New York”. Beneath the facade of making it in New York, are the terms by which making it as a “glamorous” dancer in a go-go bar are possible. A strip-tease disposes of “the glamor” and unsuspectedly reveals a Scottish nationalist warrior dancing to the Jacobite song, “Such a Parcel of Rogues.”

In this performance I paralleled the colonization of Scotland with the colonization of women’s sexuality. I think only two Scottish girlfriends in the audience laughed and understood. The rest of the audience were puzzled but entertained…

Go-Go Girls Seize Control