Duration: 7min. Written and Directed: La Ribot. Performer: La Ribot. Music: Sonate for piano n22 Beethoven. Lighting Design: Freddy Guerlache. Costumes: La Ribot
Show/ Strip Tease
Socorro! Gloria!, 1991, is a choreographed dance solo disguised as a humorous cabaret entertainment. The performance depends on stage props and costume, but it also relies on precise movement and exact timing. Its feminist humour turns on a parody of two female stereotypes – the flustered woman unequal to the task of making a public address, and the professional stripper.
In Socorro! Gloria! La Ribot appears on stage with her usually slim frame curiously enlarged. She sits down and adjusts a microphone stand as if about to speak or sing, but seems unable to settle. Struggling to retain her composure, she begins peeling off layer after layer of clothing, some of it very bizarre indeed: a khaki green animal-print all-in-one bodysuit, for example. After a while the performance style shifts and La Ribot’s strip ends by mimicking the moves of the practiced striptease artist, but with further twists, since she is wearing not one but four pairs of stockings and at least half-a-dozen pairs of knickers. Beethoven’s piano sonata no. 22 accompanies the peculiar striptease, its highbrow romanticism simultaneously undercut by and enhancing the comedy of La Ribot’s performance.