After a delightful breakfast plate at the Free Press Cafe patio on a beautiful sunny day (such luxury!) and my inaugural Winnipeg Fringe show of the year already in the bag, there was no rest for the limping, and it was time to hurry off to another venue for show #2 of the day. This time it was the good old Rachel Brown Theatre (another flight of stairs…sorry, machete knee), right off all the main shenanigans in the Exchange District, for PULL YOURSELF TOGETHER from Hiljames Movement.

From my own admittedly feeble deduction skills, ‘hiljames’ is one Hilary James, a Winnipeg dancer who comprises one third of the featured troupe in this show along with Naomi Wiebe and Brooke Hess. Together they team up to bring an almost entirely dance and movement based show, revolving around the central theme of lipstick. And here I’m going to weirdly digress for a moment and say that, recently, I rewatched THE LEGO MOVIE with my partner. And I remember thinking, as I was seeing it again, that this movie, based on a random pile of plastic toy bricks for children, should absolutely not work. Seriously, there’s no godly reason why a movie about Lego should be any damn good at all. It shouldn’t work. And I could say the same about a dance show about lipstick. Why would it work? It shouldn’t! But it does! It works SO HARD! Almost as hard as our three dance superstars work during this show’s runtime, which is pretty bloody hard, I tell ya.

There’s actually more of a narrative in this one than I was expecting from a dance show, which I swear is not a dig at dance shows, which I love. But cleverly using only the occasional words from sound bite and ad copy about lipstick from over the years, along with a just killer soundtrack, the troupe puts together a strong and affecting story (or at least theme, depending on how much I should be reading into what I saw) about the culture of commercial beauty, societal expectations on women, and whatever else you get out of this dazzling display. Excellent dance and movement happening here, with a lot of heart, personality and style that had me happily cheering for more. And I’m just a dumb boy who’s never even USED lipstick, much less been pressured into it day after day. Then again, after this show, maybe I will? I WOULD look dazzling with a splash of Rouge Allure…

PULL YOURSELF TOGETHER plays at the Rachel Brown Theatre at the Winnipeg Fringe Festival, advance tickets and schedule info available at the main website HERE. See you at the beer tent, and happy Fringing! Peace, love and soul,

The Visitor (aka Kevin)