On the week of January 12, the HCC Ybor City campus Dance Club sponsored and hosted Jane Comfort and Company’s “Beauty” series. The series included events such as a poetry jam, dance workshops, and discussions on the meaning of real beauty.

  At the end of the week-long workshops, Jane Comfort and Company performed the piece, titled “Beauty”. The dances focused on the American idea of Barbie, and how women and men view beauty in different ways.

  The dance began with a woman getting ready for a date. The audience curiously watched as she answered her cell phone and proudly said “I will be ready in 45 minutes!” As she began preparing her face, four dancers took the main stage.

  The movements of the dances ranged from rigid and stiff to fluid and downright floppy, as the four “Barbie-esque” women danced through the pageant-like stage. One dancer told the audience her insecurities, while another dancer moved puppet-like as a man described how to tell if a woman is “into you” and how to see the signs of flirting.

  The show ranged from cliche to risque, with the dancers doing pirouettes to booty pops. One dancer did a “faux-to” shoot, (that is, a pretend photo shoot), and afterward her photo was shown on a screen as the “photographer” edited the picture until the model was nearly unrecognizable. Many members of the audience gasped as he demanded that her skin be lightened and her waist be taken in, one audience member shouted “No!” as the end result photo was shown.

  At the end of the performance, members of the audience are chosen at random to vote on the winner of the “Barbie Pageant”. “You get these sort of polite refusals like ‘oh they’re all beautiful’ or ‘Barbie number 5’… but you aren’t told what you’re voting on. You don’t know if you are voting on who is most beautiful or who can kick their legs highest. It’s sort of interesting.” said Jane Comfort.

  Comfort created the dance and the movements around text and music, hoping to shed light on the way that Americans view beauty. The dance club brought the show to the Ybor City campus so that incoming freshman would begin to rethink the way that they see beauty. The workshops served as a vehicle for the conversation to begin.

  The dancers that are part of Jane Comfort’s dance company are from around the world, from Europe to Iowa, each bringing their own flavor to the dances. The diversity of the dancers helped show the wide range of beauty in women, no two dancers looked alike but they were all beautiful.

  Comfort is based in New York City, but “Beauty” travels to colleges across the country, as well as other parts of the world, tailoring the show to fit the different cultures. With hope, the people that viewed the dance and participated in the workshops will begin to view beauty with a new perspective, and the pressure that society puts on women to fit into a specific mold that nobody can truly fit into will disappear.