Saturday at Bumbershoot: Let's Hear It For the Girls

So we woke up with no intention of getting all Gloria Steinem on you early on a Sunday morning, but after searching for the tie that bound together our first day of Bumbershoot, we couldn't help but gloat that the women of Bumbershoot were kicking ass/taking names.

We started our day with Decadance Theater, an all-female dance troupe who popped, locked, flipped and B-Girled their way through a history of hip-hop, stomping all over a soundtrack of hip-hop anthems and their references to "trick ass ho bitches" ad nauseum. At one point, the dancers donned jumpsuits strung with LED lights which, turned on, transformed them into what looked like pulsating sound waves or dancing line drawings. They were powerful and captivating and totally exhausting.

We'll admit that we then made our way to the Sound Transit Stage for St. Vincent completely unaware of what we would find, but lured by a Sufjan connection (we cannot resist the power that is Sufjan). What we found was Annie Clark and our newest musical crush. Ms. Clark aka St. Vincent has a sweet and strained but soulful voice that can turn a song about Mary and her lambs into a surreal and smoky anthem. And did we mention she can play guitar? She can. Phenomenally so. In fact, Annie, her bluesy electric guitar and a reverb pedal are St. Vincent. And they're really all she needs to transport us into a world of dreamy noise.

From dreamy songs of hummingbirds and flower children we ventured into the "butthole sculptures" and pasties that are "I Love Led Zeppelin" for a loud, hysterical romp into the brain of local cartoonist Ellen Forney. The show, based on Forney's collection of cartoons of the same name, is an homage to all things Zeppelin, featuring Forney, local burlesque star Miss Indigo Blue, classic rocking band the Dt's and emcee Whitney Pastorek. Pastorek opened the show with a painfully hilarious rendition of "Stairway to Heaven" before Forney took over and reminisced about the time she was fax-seduced by Camille Paglia, gave us a tour of Seattle's most erotic landmarks, and urged us to consider "buckling up, especially when rocking out to something lame," in hopes of preventing us from departing the world James-Dean-style while listening to Berlin or Sheryl Crow. Forney is just as hysterical and sharp as her cartoons; we could listen to her for hours. And then of course there was Miss Indigo Blue, whose bawdy revue left our mouths agape after she drenched herself in lemonade and served the crowd drinks, um, "prepared," on her stomach, and elsewhere.

Our last stop for the night was NYC storytelling project "The Moth" whose unscripted stories followed the night's theme of "Sex, Drugs and Rock 'n Roll." Three of the four storytellers were men and they were perfectly funny and recounted tales of wet dreams and acid trips and being "that guy," but it was local indie darling Kimya Dawson who stole the show. With a shaking voice and fidgeting hands she told her story of loneliness and alcohol and love and childbirth, which ended with an apropos (we promise!) rendition of Whitney Houston's "The Greatest Love of All" like a big and somehow (thank god) not Oprah-esque group hug. It is official: the world needs more Kimya.

Okay, we're stopping now. We're tipping our proverbial hats to the women of Bumbershoot for a lovely Saturday afternoon. Our sides are aching.

Photo courtesy of flickr's joshc