Dancer Mirenka Cechova explores transgender life in 'S/He is Nancy Joe'
By Sarah Kaufman
http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/dancer-mirenka-cechova-explores-transgender-life-in-she-is-nancy-joe/2012/11/09/dbbee006-2ab6-11e2-96b6-8e6a7524553f_story.htmlIn other words, what we hide from the world is what audiences will respond to most. So it is that Mirenka Cechova's solo docu-dance, "S/He Is Nancy Joe," strikes a particularly powerful chord as it takes us deep into the confusion, shame and isolation of the transgender experience. (Scissors loom large. Just warning you.)
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This hour-long fantasy, presented here in its only U.S. stop, hits so hard because it springs from honest origins. Cechova has a transgender sister who used to be her brother. This piece, as she told me in a phone interview, arose from efforts to reconcile herself to that. In the process, she spent two years speaking with other transgender people, who shared with her their diaries and private pain.
As a result, what Cechova may have initially longed to bury, she embraces in a most intimate way. In "S/He," she embodies the mirror image of her sister's experience, showing us a man imprisoned in a female body.
