A silence hung in the air, murmuring chatter around us and the singular strum of the electric bass guitar. All eyes and ears were fixed on a figure sitting on the edge of the stage, naked except for the guitar, engrossed in the plucking of one string after another; the notes hung suspended in the air, filling the space. The audience was so absorbed in the story the guitar told that when the last note faded into silence, it was complete. We held out breath. The girl, dressed in ornate crown and shoulder beads, strutted around the stage to baroque-sounding music, stopping suddenly to reach out for an audience member’s hand, a silent, anxious plea, a reassurance.

One-by-one, three other girls in varying stages of undress joined her on stage; each started in on their own individual dance. Like planets, the girls orbited each other, seemingly absorbed in their own worlds, yet managing to avoid hitting each other. At first their movements were fluid and the music happy, but as the dance went on and the music transitioned into a melody of haunting violins, their movements became more erratic and disorderly. They would take turns strutting up and down the stage like models, pivoting mechanically. Slowly undressing, the girls revealed their intricately different bodies; they were all sizes and shapes. Each girl was simultaneously unabashed and apprehensive of their nakedness. Ornate mirrors reflected an image that did nothing but frustrate the girls; they danced around the stage in a mad stomp like erratic, excitable atoms. The girls shook with epileptic-like fits, their entire bodies vibrating with movement as the music reached a terrifying crescendo. Just as suddenly, the shaking would stop and the girls would resume their dances as if nothing had happened. At one point, they started screaming in rage.

The simultaneous singularity and symbiosis of the piece is what truly struck me; though each girl was absorbed in her own dance, to the point where she seemed disconnected from the others and the audience, sudden shifts would occur where the girls would fall back into line. Stomping erratically around each other became stomping in unison; strutting up and down the stage became a group affair where one girl became the ringleader, shouting commands like ‘go,’ ‘pivot,’ and ‘now’; and leaps were performed in groups of three. In this, I saw the pressures of modern girls to fit in; inclusion and individuality and all the raw anxieties that come with both were presented. As one girl was lifted by two others, the fourth ran after in desperation, begging to be seen. As soon as the leap was finished, the girls would rotate, the fourth becoming the first and the first becoming excluded.

The societal pressures on women were prevalent in the piece. The nudeness and mirrors represented a type of body image crisis to me. The first girl seemed to dress up in fancy decorations as a way to meet society’s expectations of her. The division of the piece revealed the two parts of each girl; the nudeness of the first half was the truth to each girl, while the dresses of the second half were the expectations of society. Midway through the second half, the girls tore the clothes off, only to experience fits reminiscent of a breakdown, and to step back into these covers. Each girl was different and beautiful in her own way, yet they all screamed in rage at the picture they saw in the mirrors. They all looked into the eyes of the audience and asked for acceptance. At one point, the small band on the side sung a jazzy rendition of “Don’t Make Me Over” by Dionne Warwick, which pleaded to “accept me for who I am, accept me for the things that I do” and to “love me with all my faults”. It’s clear that Spradlin sought to convey the confusion and anxiety of women over the modern conception of beauty. The feverous fits seemed to represent some sort of attack on the body, whether it be internal or external, psychological or societal. These women were torn between their own self perception and society’s expectations of them.