DANCE REVIEW : Powerful, and Hilarious, Symbolism Through a Gay’s Eyes

SAN DIEGO —  Ah, to be young, gifted . . . and gay! This personal profile and a smattering of experiences provide the dramatic impetus for “Some Golden States,” Tim Miller’s latest dance-based performance piece now at Sushi.

Miller has traveled the autobiographical route before. Two years ago, he brought us “Buddy Systems,” an early installment of his life story, which Miller called “a specific one-person surgical memoir of adolescence.”

“Some Golden States” picks up where “Buddy Systems” left off, with some emotional residue from the latter, and an even harder edge. Once more Miller demonstrates his knack for transforming highly autobiographical material into powerful universal symbols and strong theatrical statements.

Don’t let the title--a reference to the metaphysical pleasure states and the California dream--fool you. Miller’s newest mix of movement, music, slides and dialogue is mired in apocalyptic tragedy. His spoken text deals with contemporary realities such as AIDS, drugs and “gay bashing,” chronicling an urban underground life style where calamity lurks around every corner.

Despite the catastrophic elements that run rampant in “Some Golden States”--or perhaps because of them--Miller has made this his most hilarious work. Even when the tale reaches its darkest ebb, the thread of humor pervading the piece remains relatively intact, right through to the crashing crescendo that leads to the work’s quiet catharsis.

Dance figured strongly in this solo piece, but it always seemed organically grown from the text--and just as earthbound.

Miller started things off on a spastic note Thursday evening, staving off the jolting tremors of an earthquake while a thundering sound track evoked the 1978 quake that shook his Whittier home. When the dancer recovered from the shock, his musings took him back to the vegetable garden, a recurring image that reaches mythic proportions in “Some Golden States.”

“Everybody is always talking about gardens, a place where everything fits ,” he said, in sardonic contrast to his own painful search for identity. Then, with cinematic speed, he let the scene shift to his first exodus away from home.

“I missed out on the hippie thing,” he announced, so he headed for the closest place to the “grail”--San Francisco. “I wanted to find a good-looking boy or the ideal political system--or both.”

The dance flounders until Miller’s close encounter with the Moonies, a side-splitting escapade in spite of the frightening implications. There’s a heart-wrenching segment in the big, bad Apple--carefully wrapped in a comic shroud, of course. The mood shifts when Miller finds his soul mate and the maturity to return to his own garden.

“I came through some strange trial by vegetable,” he says after he flees from the Moonies.

The symbolism is sustained with a steady stream of graphic projections designed by Miller and his vegetable portrait maker, Lillian Kiesler.

Miller ends this theatrical statement with a parable--Damocles with the precarious dagger (a zucchini in this telling of the tale) dangling over his head. It’s a piercing metaphor for the threat of AIDS. However, Miller doesn’t end his performance piece on a bitter note.

“I will plant myself in the world, for I want to stick around doing stuff,” he repeats from his perch in a dirt-covered wheelbarrow. “I will plant myself in the world.”

Such is the final message in Miller’s hourlong performance. It’s not a new one, but, as told by this creative artist, it resounds with a new sense of urgency and truth.

Miller will continue to relive “Some Golden States” tonight and Sunday at 8, and again Thursday through Dec. 11.