Pianist Envy
I was under the impression that Clayton Lee’s “Goldberg Variations” — which I saw at NYU Skirball on Tuesday, Feb. 13 — would be a more-or-less standard performance of Bach, interwoven with personal narrative.
Boy, was I wrong.
I knew something was different about these “Variations” — part of the Queer New York Arts Festival — when, pre-show, Lee’s laptop screen was opened to the Wikipedia page of professional wrestler Bill Goldberg.
It turns out that Lee’s “Variations” are part of the performance artist’s “research project” that all his sexual partners — Ron, Ross, Paul, their social media pages projected onscreen — have resembled Goldberg.
Repeating the phrase, “there’s a version of this performance …,” Lee evoked the alternate timelines of Everything Everywhere All At Once.
At one point, he says, “What’s the feeling of being fucked by white supremacy so long you start to like it?”
It all reaches a tipping point when Lee, wearing sparkly booty shorts, enters the boxing ring, where he was clobbered by two wrestlers.
For most of the performance, Bach figures only nominally. Except for some snippets of Glenn Gould’s grunt-filled recording, oddly sexual in itself.
That is, until pianist Adam Tendler (who does not look like Goldberg, but also does not not look like Goldberg) strips down to his skivvies, and begins playing the tender aria. He reaches under the lid, making scraping sounds.
Shirtless men spritz perfume into the audience. Then, things really escalate. Lee, bound with Shibari rope, is doused with lube and suspended from the ceiling. Dripping. Squelching.
Eventually, Lee is lowered, and the hunky men begin passing out hot dogs (which I declined, but overheard were actually candy.) I think to myself, “Is it… over?”
“I didn’t know what to expect,” said one older, probably traumatized, patron. “Well, at least we got a little music.”
The performance was immediately followed by a “prompt talkback” with Skirball’s engagement director.
The absurdity of Lee, still in a damp robe, fielding questions about queer theory, made me wonder, “Is this satire?” Stagehands mopped up the goop in the background.
However, Lee made an interesting point about the “whiteness” of classical music. We learned that this was his first iteration of the performance with live piano.
And, as an outsider, Lee has “no preciousness around Bach.” That’s for sure.
