Lucia August is happy to call herself an Elder. Although she loved dance from an early age, Lucia was not given entry to the dance world until she was 50. Now, at 72, she’s a strong, confident woman, and she wants to share that with us, to encourage everyone to speak their own truth, to plough their own furrow.
Lucia has never stopped moving forwards; she’s not interested in a sedate later life – she wants to live it to the full, for as long as she can. And she doesn’t want (and doesn’t want any of us) to apologise for claiming space in the world.
In Tales from Your Queer Elder Lucia begins as she means to go on, with an eye-catching entrance. First we see one hand, then an arm, then a vision in green and black emerges, She invites our applause, and boy does she get it. She’s a presence on the stage, exuding warmth and empathy, completely at ease with herself. She holds her body as the professional dancer that she now is; every movement is graceful, expressive and fluid.
Despite that, this is no airy-fairy-isn’t-everything-lovely show; Lucia is witty, wise-cracking and very funny. Her facial gestures frequently belie her words; she draws us into her private thoughts – ones that we will recognise all too well. A phone call with an unseen partner is particularly well done; who among us hasn’t been polite, enthusiastic even, to a caller while simultaneously grimacing and gesticulating in horror? I have no idea now Facetime ever became a thing. The young must be so much more transparent.
Tales from Your Queer Elder is made up of three parts. In the first, Consistent Paradox, Lucia is Ocean Moneybags, a billionaire surrounded by yes-men and ‘special companions’. Ocean Moneybags is, allegedly,
‘Happy because I have it al! ’My life is EXPANSIVE!
Except, as Lucia conveys in mime, it isn’t. There’s an invisible wall around Ocean Moneybags and when we find out what that wall is, we realise that OM’s life isn’t quite as perfect as they’ve tried to present it, and we feel for them despite all their bravado.
There are costume changes between each part of the show, and I did find these a little protracted and disruptive. Music and lighting, however, are especially effective, particularly in Lucia’s next playlet.
In They Never Really Leave, Lucia tells us about her first female lover, Christy, who disappeared in 1983 and has never been found. In her re-enactment of the Grateful Dead concert they attended together, Lucia (now dressed in a tie-dye top) completely nails the fading counterculture of the early 1970s. Music, drugs and wild dancing combine to let us know just what it was like in the days when branding was what you did to prize bulls and product placement meant stashing your hash in your back pocket.
Tarot cards also make an appearance, in fact the entire audience is gifted a group reading,
‘We’re doing better than we think we are; it’s often the way when you think about it.’
For Lucia is above all a positive person, and in Eldering, her final piece, a voiceover asks her about her role as an Elder in the LGBT+ – and the Plus Size – communities. Her response is a particularly lovely dance, with beautiful use of hands and arms to convey her joy in at last being able to be herself, and her invitation to us to free ourselves from the ties that hold us back. She tells us to stand firm, to love our ideas and feelings, and allow them to propel us in the direction we wish to take; to love our bodies, to be a compassionate ally to our friends and to the earth, and a similar ally to ourselves. She thanks the LGBT+ people who went before her,
‘That dangerous trail you had to walk, that trail that opened up into a path, then a road…for my generation.’
And if all this sounds a bit New Agey to you, all I can say is that it fits perfectly with what has gone before. The Fringe will offer you a swathe of cynical, smart-ass comedians, but Lucia’s liberated, generous spirit celebrates the good in our collective lives, and leaves us all feeling that the world really can be a better place. And if we’re not reminded of that once in a while, what hope is there for us?
Monday’s audience clearly loved this show, so if you need an hour of positivity and wonderful dancing (not to mention a lot of good laughs), this is one for you.
Tales From Your Queer Elder is at Greenside @ George Street (Lime Studio), Venue 236 on 13, 15 and 16 August only.
