May 8–15, 1997
critical mass

The Many Moods of Myra
By Deni Kasrel
Photo by Julia Lehman.

Bazell today.	Bazell in her big-hair days.

When Myra Bazell discusses genocidal rape and the Bosnian War, it's impossible not to notice the piercing intensity of her chocolate brown eyes. She has immersed herself in researching the subject for her new piece, Down Wind, premiering this weekend, and her body language — arms pulled tight to the torso, clasped hands held up to pursed lips — conveys the gravity she feels.

Then talk turns to Peanut Lady, and her eyes grow bright, a devilish smile emerges and the arms release, gesticulating freely.
Peanut Lady — "the Brooklyn bimbo," a stage character for which Bazell dons a cheesy wig, busty bra and pumps — is giddily over the top. All the more so when one considers that the person beneath the costume is a compact muscular woman who enjoys dressing butch. She shaves her head every few days with a buzzer and about once a month goes for a wet shave with double edge "to get that Telly Savalas, Mrs. Clean look." Bazell first shaved her head about four and a half years ago. At the time she was one of five female dancers in Karen Bamonte Dance Works who put their locks under the knife. "Until then I was always about hair. Big, red and curly. Just high hair," says Bazell.

As a bald woman with noticeable biceps Bazell admits she gets some puzzled looks and is sometimes mistaken for a guy. These folks would likely be surprised by Bazell's soft voice and easygoing demeanor. "A lot of people, their first impression is she's tough and hard. But she's very gentle and soft and nurturing," says Katharine Livingston, who dances with Bazell in the collaborative SCRAP Performance Group.

Multiple personae make this 34-year-old one of the more fascinating individuals on our performance scene. She started dancing at age 5 and has pretty much lived in the spotlight ever since. She's studied ballet, flamenco, jazz, African, modern, postmodern and hip-hop dance, voice and acting. She's done the dinner-theater circuit and been a backup singer for local rock bands. Presently, Bazell is best known for her sensual, primal performances for SCRAP. Here's where she revels in the androgynous.
"I love androgyny," she asserts. "I would rather mix up what the rules are supposed to be than adhere to convention. I don't live conventionally. My first love, when I was 13, was with a woman... It's part of who I am. It's very clear in my work — the gender issue is bent, distorted."

Bazell believes her androgyny and bisexuality are genetic. She has two sisters and says between them "there's a lot of masculinity... a lot of testosterone."

She grew up in Overbrook Park. Her mother, ne Shirley Betchen, ran two dance studios on Walnut Street in the '40s and '50s. Her father, Albert Bazell (nicknamed "Red" because he had bright red hair), a Navy man, was a nightclub singer who had a radio show. "He was a good storyteller," Bazell recalls. Red became a salesman to better support his family. He died of cancer when Myra was 14 years old.

She had no choice but to go into dance as a child. Bazell started with ballet and danced with the Ballet des Jeunes, a young professional company. She was far from the star pupil. "I was not the favorite. I didn't have a classical dancer body. I was very hyperactive. I was overly friendly. Not your little disciplined ballerina bunhead."

The teacher relegated Bazell to character parts. "I was always the hobgoblin, never the snow queen," she comments, letting out a hearty laugh.

For a while Bazell resented having to spend so much time dancing while her pals where enjoying normal adolescent social lives. In her early teens she discovered flamenco and that attitude changed. "I started realizing what it was to allow your passion to move through your body. It had nothing to do with how high my leg was going or if it was turned out properly. It was a turning point for me," she says.
If anything marks Bazell's work, it's passion. She takes things to an intense edge. Often with an audible, animal energy. "When Myra dances she makes noises... cat sounds," says Livingston.

When Bazell was with the jazz-pop Waves Dance Company the director used to chastise her for grunting and screaming. "I always wanted to drive the whole company through the house. There's something explosive that happens inside of me when I'm with an audience," she says.

She attended the Philadelphia High School for Performing Arts in its first years of operation. Back then it was "experimental," she says, not very academic. But Bazell got great dance training. She went on to dance with Waves and Group Motion Dance Theater, both of which were led by instructors at that school. Bazell performed for both companies throughout the '80s. During that period she also found time to get married to a jazz musician, whom she divorced six years later.

In the early '90s Bazell joined the multimedia Twitch Limit Dance Theatre, through which she met Conrad Bender. The two became lovers. A few years ago the pair bought a 1930s-vintage house together in Newtown Square which they've been slowly renovating. Last year they planted pine trees and hundreds of annuals in the backyard.

There's incongruity to this scenario. Bazell admits to being "entirely urban," yet she resides in the suburbs. She perceives the locale as a kind of refuge. Bender describes their home as "very quiet and peaceful. A good vibe to come home to."

Even so, neither Bazell nor Bender spend a heck of a lot of time in the Newtown Square digs. Bender is technical director at the Arts Bank, and he freelances his services to a variety of artists. Bazell teaches at the University of the Arts and Bryn Mawr College, there's the work with SCRAP (Bender is also part of this collective), and she freelances as a movement coach for actors, most recently for the Wilma Theatre's Avenue X and American Music Theater Festival's Black Water.

With her own choreography Bazell favors funky, fast-footed, knee-grinding moves. "I think my background musically is what inspired me in my dance," she states. "It's a mixture of Parliament/Funkadelic, Quincy Jones, Pink Floyd and Tchaikovsky." Her work generally deals with relationships, with attitudes running from loving to predatory. And there's that androgynous edge.

"I'm driven by dream imagery and emotional content. As a viewer I'd rather feel something from a movie or a theater piece. Rather than say, 'Wow, that was nice to watch,' I'd prefer it hit a nerve in me. So, I would like to convey and portray the things that move me emotionally in my work and as a result move the audience."

More than a year ago she began working with grid-like scaffolding. This allows her to create multilayered images and add richness to the picture being crafted. It's also served as a very practical device: the first time Bazell employed the scaffold she was recovering from knee surgery and wanted to keep as much pressure off the joint as possible. Climbing and swinging on the grid helped.

That operation was one of four knee surgeries she's undergone. The first happened at age 16. She has a ligament from a cadaver in her body. A doctor once asked her how many car accidents she'd been in because her neck looks like it's suffered a classic case of multiple whiplash. "That's from all those years of jerking my head back doing jazz dance," she explains.

"I'm broken," the sturdy-looking woman observes. "My body is this strong because I've been rehabbing."

Which makes her career as a choreographer all the more urgent. Here she is nearing her middle 30s. She's been featured in dance companies for decades. It's only been in the last one that she's truly let her personal vision flourish.

"That would bring fear into your heart if all you knew was performing," declares A. Madison Cario, who is frequently seen tooling around town with Bazell. They make for a striking pair: two bald, often similarly dressed women with beefy biceps.

"We seem to connect on many different levels," says Cario. "Whether it's politics or whatever. There's an avenue of communication... We share the same viewfinder, the same vision, and we can't be surface for too long."

The pair share a common concern over the atrocities of the Bosnian War. They collaborate on Down Wind, a piece that responds to the massive incidence of rape-warfare and forced emigration in Bosnia.

Bazell, who does not perform in the piece, is its choreographer/director. She's adopting a non-literal approach. "It's more like a poem than a documentary," she elaborates. "It's the first piece I've made that's not entertaining. I've had a lot of fun with my exotic, sensual, androgynous, hip, cool stuff."

"I feel in my own humble way I'm on a mission. To shed light on an issue that needs to be spoken about. The work is a conduit for the information. Before this my work was more focused on my own little trip. This is bigger than I am. It's a more universal issue. It's about human potential."

Rest assured, anyone who can move with the intensity Bazell does, four knee surgeries and creaky neck notwithstanding, has a good handle on the nature of human potential.

SCRAP Performance Group presents Down Wind, Bloodletting & Fear of Water, May 8-11, 8 p.m., International Expo Center, corner of Second & Girard, 893-1145.