Dancing Right Out Onto the Edge

A press release cautions that “Edgewalkers” contains nudity and pervasive sexual themes. Indeed, as Ella Fitzgerald sings “Ants invaded my pants,” from the witty Rodgers and Hart classic “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered,” the work’s lead dancer and choreographer, Michael Mizerany, will doff that particular article of clothing. He will also be completely naked.

And in bed with another man.

The provocative piece is Mizerany’s first evening-length work, and the first the choreographer has made for such a large number of dancers--nine including himself. Mizerany Dance premieres it this weekend at Los Angeles Theatre Center. Funded by a $9,000 grant from the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department, the work combines classical modern dance, a bit of cabaret theatrics and a dose of good, old-fashioned melodrama: There’s a smoking gun, some Walt Whitman, and a transsexual chanteuse.

With a nonlinear story line, “Edgewalkers” tackles various aspects of being gay--political, sociological, personal--from the viewpoint of a man who travels back and forth in time between the 19th and 21st centuries, only to learn that life is basically the same in both eras.

It’s a bit surreal--a “portal” allows the dancers to move fluidly between the centuries--but Mizerany, an artist who could be called an envelope-pusher, also approaches his work with a certain degree of pragmatism.

“I could never go into schools with this work,” he acknowledges, saying that he hates shows that use nudity just for the sake of nudity. “But I have to do what I care about,” adds Mizerany, whose character is the only one in the work called upon to take off all of his clothes. “I want to go to a point where it makes people a little uncomfortable, but where it doesn’t intrude on the narrative.”

The narrative in this case concerns a man (Jeff Bulkley) who is engaged to a woman (Stephanie Scott) but finds he prefers men, ultimately following his libido into back alleys and bedrooms. There is also a witch (Laila Abdullah), albeit a good one, who helps guide him through a life dictated by oppression.

The two-act work uses music from Bach and Bartok to Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, Fitzgerald and excerpts from the hard-edged 2000 film “Requiem for a Dream.” Mizerany’s partner of eight years, Marco De Leon, designed the sets, including the 10-by-6-foot muslin-draped, backlighted portal. Diana MacNeil created the costumes, which are most elaborate for the women: high-collared, tight bodices and floor-length skirts representing the past, and sequined cocktail dresses with feather boas for the 21st century.

“This production is a big deal both personally and professionally,” says Mizerany, “because my work before was mainly solos, duets and trios. Career-wise, I hope it will lead me to getting presented by some of the bigger venues.”

It’s the seventh week of rehearsals for “Edgewalkers,” and the dancers are in the L.A. center’s Theater 3, a 324-seat auditorium that Mizerany has rented for the production and hopes to fill for the eight performances. (The work is scheduled to repeat at Electric Lodge in Venice in December for a weekend.)

Mizerany, who has been nominated five times for the Lester Horton Dance Award for Individual Performance, winning twice, in 1995 and 1996, has just run through a sizzling pas de deux with Bulkley, in which the choreographer leaps into Bulkley’s arms and passionately kisses him while a quartet of women sway their hips and execute foxy hand motions.

During a rehearsal break, Mizerany, unpretentious in baggy sweats and a T-shirt, discusses his work. “In the 19th century, being gay wasn’t a lifestyle, it was a behavior. Today, though you can live life ‘out,’ there is still oppression; the government does more things to push us down. Marriage rights don’t exist and hate crime laws are hard to pass. Not that it’s not better,” he adds, “it is. But people in power today still think like they did in the 19th century. After Sept. 11, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson blamed gays and abortionists for the attacks, though they did retract the statements.”

Mizerany says that in taking on such serious issues, he also feels the need to infuse the work with comedy, otherwise “it becomes too preachy, too heavy-handed. That’s why Lisa [Gillespie] lip-syncs songs as a transsexual cabaret singer, and I’ve made a conga line dance with jazz club-type music. It may be heavy on sexuality, but it’s kitschy too. And everyone was really game.”

Mizerany had worked with Bulkley and Gillespie before, but he auditioned the other dancers. He says he storyboarded the 13 scenes, created the movements he wanted in the studio, then put them on his dancers. “You have to be able to show what you want physically, but it doesn’t look the same, so I alter moves. They’re not me. I experiment a bit on their bodies.”

And the body is still the tool through which Mizerany best communicates. He came to Los Angeles in 1989 from his hometown of St. Louis to dance with Loretta Livingston and Dancers. He stayed with them until 1996, when he joined Bella Lewitzky Dance Company for its final season of touring. He began choreographing in 1994, and snagged the two Hortons in 1995 and 1996 for his solos “Tin Soldier” and “Bump in the Road,” respectively.

Since then, Mizerany, 39, who still dances with Livingston as well as with Los Angeles-based Francisco Martinez Dancetheatre and San Diego-based John Malashock, has made nearly a dozen dances. In 2000, he was awarded a C.O.L.A. fellowship (from the city of Los Angeles) for “Necessary Depravity,” a satire about homosexual conversion therapies, and in 2001 he founded Mizerany Dance, he says, to do more work about lesbian and gay issues. A nonprofit, he says, gives him better access to grant money earmarked for creating work.

Earlier this year, Mizerany premiered “Bible Wall,” in which he also danced nude at one point. It ran for three weeks at North Hollywood’s Whitmore-Lindley Theater Center. Smaller and more personal than “Edgewalkers,” the coming-out piece was supported by a $2,650 Cultural Affairs grant. Chris Pasles, in the Los Angeles Times, praised him as “a finely honed dancer ... [who] knows how to occupy and cut an expressive figure in space. The surprise is how good a writer he is in balancing seriousness and comedy, the general and the particular.”

For all of its playfulness, seriousness abounds in “Edgewalkers.” When the rehearsal continues, Mizerany oversees a rigorous duet between Bulkley and Scott. As the yearnings of Bach’s Mass in B minor permeate the theater (all of the Scott-Bulkley duets are danced to Bach), the couple executes a series of yoga-like poses, after which Scott soars into Bulkley’s arms.

Bulkley, who knew Mizerany in St. Louis and moved to Los Angeles a year and a half ago to dance with him, sees his part as an acting challenge, not least because he’s straight. “It’s more kissing than I’ve done, but since I’ve acted--I was in the [gay-themed] play “Jeffrey”--when I’m on stage, it’s part of a whole performance.”

Scott, a recent transplant to Los Angeles from Texas, studied dance at CalArts and dances with another local ensemble, Frit and Frat Fuller’s Kin Dance Company. “For me, the choreography is brilliant, because of the way Michael tells stories and adds humor to everything he does, so it doesn’t get so dark,” Scott says. “It helps me as a dancer, because we have a story line, an emotion that we’re supposed to fill.”

Mizerany points out that “Edgewalkers” has a universal theme, and that he hopes everyone will have a personal take on the show. “I’m conveying a serious message but with a little sugar,” he adds. “I always feel like I’ll be striving--there will be some good work and some bad work. But I want people to know I’m trying.”

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“EDGEWALKERS,” Mizerany Dance, Los Angeles Theatre Center, 514 S. Spring St., Los Angeles. Dates: Opens Friday. Runs Fridays-

Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays-Sundays, 3 p.m. Through Sept. 8. Prices: $16-$20. Phone: (213) 473-0660.

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Victoria Looseleaf is a frequent contributor to Calendar.