Anthony Roth Costanzo, Adam Linder, Myriam Ben Salah and Lily McMenamy.
I CONVINCED ME that writing this was an opportunity to channel my inner Rhonda Lieberman – if only that were possible. Last week in Chicago, as I walked through the early moments of the Renaissance Society’s “RenBen: TRU RENAISSANCE” in 2023 – an annual fundraising affair orchestrated by the institution’s chief curator and director, Myriam Ben Salah , and led by creation this year by artist and choreographer Adam Linder — I looked for a scandal, but found none; I longed for juicy gossip, but couldn’t dig it up. I tried to provoke artist Piero Golia, who was there as a civilian after hosting RenBen last year. Surely he must have opinions on Linder’s redirection of theatrical staging as part of a gala dinner? But there was no beef to be had. Golia was surprisingly polite about performer and model Lily McMenamy, who had been directed by Linder to spar with the contestants in a nonsensical pantomime onslaught.
As I entered the DuSable Black History Museum and Education Center, I was greeted by fashion photographer Will Davidson, who was armed with a camera and dazzled in Gucci (one of the event’s main sponsors). Just beyond Davidson’s stepper, McMenamy occupied the center of the expansive rotunda, adorned in a fake blood-stained leotard and matching bright red lips. She must have just devoured the heart of an unsuspecting patron, and if anyone forgot she was there, she would let out a bloodcurdling scream as a reminder. At one point (or probably several), she made fun of the guests who were chatting rather than giving her the attention she deserved. In the background, a looping saxophone solo switching between the serene Muzak and the dissonance of a horror movie (the sound was, I assume, by Linder CERTAIN SHOPS, previously performed in galleries and museums). I commented on the discomfort I felt during a particularly high-pitched pulse, and a less sensitive participant retorted that he hadn’t noticed. At that point, I was completely alienated from the experience, and rather liked the feeling. The range of in-between performances seemed to exist at the expense of conversation rather than in its service—an inevitability, perhaps, of dinner theater.
This year’s RenBen included an hour-long cake-cutting ceremony. All photos: Noah Sheldon.
If McMenamy was meant to be the scene stealer, the two performers who hustled the outskirts of the DuSable rotunda as part of CERTAIN SHOPS retreated into the shadows. Later that evening, while chatting with my seatmate, artist and filmmaker Jordan Strafer, I was distracted by a scene unfolding out of the corner of my eye. Dancer Stephen Thompson had his denim shorts cut around his ankles, which I imagine were his bare buttocks obscured by a tasselled leather briefcase in shades of mauve that he used as a prop. The performer’s seductive hip rolls simulated a sort of sexual exchange with the architecture, the pale hues of the towel spreading out behind him like a makeshift curtain. I don’t know how many attendees saw this sexcapade, but it brought me a healthy dose of lustful joy and also reminded me of what I saw earlier that day at the Renaissance Society.
Lily McMenamy.
A detour: a heavy curtain of green beads accompanied by sparkling LEDs of Puppies Puppies (Jade Guanaro Kuriki-Olivo); Divine Em and another pole dancer from Fly Club Chicago alternate their routines, bathed in soft pink light; an episode of the Phil Donahue Show about a teenager sodomized with a broomstick, edited by Larry Clark and relayed on three deceived monitors; a live stream of a few kittens, another of someone sleeping in China; Karen Kilimnik’s faceless painting hanging from a pole like those aforementioned pole dancers; The depressed by Marie Laurencin Head of a young woman, 1926, fleeing said pole dancers; a configuration of plastic-wrapped furniture that I’m told is used for table reads led by Catherine Sullivan and Pope.L (unfortunately couldn’t stay in town long enough to see the setting staged by the latter from the one-act play by Adrienne Kennedy The drama circle); urine bags; a configuration of walls imitating the geometric ceiling of the Renaissance Society; two sparring editions of Larry Johnson Untitled (How to draw Chelsea Manning), 2022; an automated scroll/walk through Instagram posts from @halal.before.haram. Here are some of the contents and events of Ren’s untitled presentation assembled by Bruce Hainley and Shahryar Nashat. Left with little background information (other than a few vague allusions to Robert Pattinson), I was able to simmer in how this display chewed me up as much as it spat me out. I felt somehow used and disabused of any museological presumption, and I liked that. Competing soundtracks appeared and blurred like works, objects, things, artifacts, toys or whatever you want them to be on display. Much like “TRU RENAISSANCE,” it was hard to know where to direct one’s desires, how to navigate the terrain: Perhaps the only thing worse than turning your back on a pole dancer suspended in the air is turning back to a painting by Marie Laurencin.
Speed skater Jeffrey Swider Peltz.
Meanwhile, McMenamy, this time wearing another sequined Gucci number (there were plenty of them), continued to do her thing on a lounge chair. Two guests at an adjacent table were dutifully attentive, but most were arguing over rations of risotto and grilled sirloin steak. Did I mention professional speed skater Jeffrey Swider Peltz going around on inline skates and a performative cake cutting that went excruciatingly slow during the evening? I would have liked to be served cake before dinner. Music by the band Coil echoed throughout the rotunda (“…Eat your vegetables, especially the broccoli. And always say thank you, especially for the broccoli”), while a sculptural arrangement by Nashat provided another visual anchor beneath the shape of a papier-mâché carcass and more urine. Chaos – impeccably choreographed chaos – reigned all night.
Before dinner was served, a disembodied voice repeatedly pleaded with the guests to find their seats. It took me a while to record requests that I didn’t know were from countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo (aka ARC), featured as the main event of the evening. When I realized the voice belonged to Costanzo, I dutifully found my way to my table lest I miss his contribution to the evening. I felt lucky in the moments that followed to hear the opera singer reciting the menu in exacting lyrical detail, even though it was nowhere to be found. I’ve never heard “squash” sound so good.
The three songs ultimately performed by ARC (in Gucci) are now forever intertwined with my DNA (also in Gucci). Accompanied by Mark A. Shuldiner on a clavicytherium – an instrument as coveted in music as a countertenor is in opera – the singer eliminated any possibility of inattention. Never having seen him perform live, but having listened to his recording of “Liquid Days” by Philip Glass and David Byrne too many times to count, I felt ARC’s voice penetrate every porous part of my body and resonate inside me, just as she did all along the cavernous DuSable rotunda. There were certified opera queens in the audience, some of whom had seen ARC perform the Metropolitan Opera reboot of Akhenaten (1984) up to three times (he reportedly told Linder he knew others who had seen him no less than nineteen). I don’t quite have the language to describe exactly how a countertenor embodies the degendered marriage between baritone and falsetto voices, but I can say Costanzo’s vocalization of Bronski Beat’s “Smalltown Boy” didn’t sound like nothing I had ever known.
The cake was finally served; the speed skater flew between the tables waving a flag displaying the financial players of the night; McMenamy became the star of a music video in her mind; the wall hustlers decoupled from the architecture and sexualized every bit of the center of the room they could, while ARC screamed at my soul in the style of Jimmy Somerville. It was a disorienting crescendo that unified the disparate gestures of the evening into a single tableau. All the attentions that had been adrift were now completely overwhelmed. Good luck to next year’s artist RenBen to match what the bejeweled Linder orchestrated (in Gucci).
