the freckles in our eyes are mirror images

Last week, Adam's owner asked me if I'd like to have tickets to the dress rehearsal of a dance show her company was putting on.

"They like to have a small show beforehand. You know, so they don't have to go naked in front of Stockholm on the first night," she explained.

Naked on the first night? I decided that this was a figure of speech – they didn't want to be exposed without having tested an audience. It was a dance show; surely there wouldn't be nudity.

I was wrong.

It was a modern dance performance, and on the whole really enjoyable. The first act included a crazy Bollywood number, a couple of pokes at the audience on our need to pay money to be entertained, and some up close time with the dancers (they donned Rudolph noses and walked into the audience, standing still and staring). The choreographer/writer was clearly going through some sort of existential crisis when he/she penned the piece: one section was devoted to bizarre dancing, dark lights, flashing words, and an increasingly dramatic voice repeatedly asking about beginnings and endings, life and death.

The second act got crazier. A lady sat upstage with a glazed look, repeating the word "Expectations" in a monotone voice. Clothing was shed with every light change, and the final scene had a naked body lying on stage right (just the back of it) and a naked man writhing across the stage on his belly (again, no frontal view). His body was moving madly, but on his face was an extremely realistic looking happy mask; the whole time he crawled/writhed across the stage, his face was in a huge, frozen smile.