Erin and I are fans of the arts. We like galleries, paintings, and sculpture; dance and performance art; gardens, flowers, and decorative landscapes. Add some nudity and eroticism into the mix, and we’re all in. Which is why we are fans of Gunnar Montana in general: The performances we’ve seen (we’ve only discovered his work in the past few years) blend a variety of dance forms and gymnastics with a degree of kinky, sexy fun. Gunnar Montana’s Basement, his latest performance, is less kinky fun and more overt grotesque, gory horror and yet still incredibly beautiful.
The overarching story is rather simplistic: A man loses the love of his life presumably to a tragic accident. Her death sends him into a spiral of madness. Capturing , torturing, and killing ease his pain and help him remember his lost love. The performance gives nods to common horror movie elements without feeling cliched. The murderer, played by Gunnar himself, wears a skin mask throughout most of the show. One dance starts off like a scene from the Saw movies. There’s a creepy, and deadly, game of musical chairs between cheerleaders. It is graphic, violent, and gory.
We loved it.
I Love Horror
I credit some of my sexual tastes to watching horror movies in my teens. Before I was old enough to rent porn at the video store (a story for another time), I watched horror films. They usually featured nudity, if not actual sex scenes; at the very least there were usually scantily clad ladies running around. I prefer actual horror to mindless gore. Give me werewolves, ghosts, or killer aliens over movies like Hostel and the other “torture gore” flicks.
Basement might be gory, but at its core, it is creepy and suspenseful instead of shocking. And the dancing is magnificent! I cannot overstate how sensual and sinuous the performances are, punctuated by the raw strength and power of Gunnar manhandling the other dancers. I’ve no doubt that gave Erin a thrill.
The Set: Into the Basement!
Gunnar’s performances began the moment we got through the door of The Latvian Society in Philadelphia. The route to the show space first took us down through a dingy, dirty basement replete with a bloody mannequin hanging upside down from some rafters. It was as scary as any bargain Halloween haunted house, but it set the tone. Once the show opened, we traveled up to the performance area through a long, narrow hall made up like the interior of a decrepit house, exposed insulation and all.
The actual set was made to feel like a basement—wooden rafters exposed and floor boards overhead, light bulbs dangling, wood pillars, and metal hooks and tools dangling.
The audience, maybe numbering a hundred people total, sat on raisers around the floor space, all very close to the action. I liked how tight the space felt. We weren’t seeing a basement set on stage from the safety of our seats in the house; we were in the basement with the cast and the show.
The Performances
I considered going through and describing each sequence, but I couldn’t do it justice describing the dancing. It would be unfair to you and to Gunnar.
Instead, I’ll give you some of my highlights.
The Opening
The show opens with most of the cast rushing around frantically in the basement. These are the victims of the horror show; they are lost, scared, and trapped. The dancing is wonderful, and made all the more mesmerizing by the strobing lights. The effect played perfectly.
I quite enjoyed the bit where one victim, Stephi Luneice, (AKA Goldi Fox from the Peek-A-Boo Review burlesque) runs on stage with a chain on her leg. She gets to the end of her slack, trips, and is then pulled screaming back off stage. It appeals to my Dom side…or sadistic side…or whatever side of me finds horror movies arousing.
The Bathtub Dance
This was not the first time Gunnar’s performance has featured a bathtub. It was the first time I saw it in person, however, and it was amazing.
Jessica Daley starts the scene bound to a cross in nothing more than a dingy thong that conveys how long she’s been imprisoned in this basement. It’s a harsh juxtaposition, the dirty, grimy basement and the beautiful, strong girl. Her physique is incredible; I was in as much awe of the power she exuded simply standing there as I was enamored with her nipple piercings (the Dom/sadist in me loved the aesthetic of all of this).
She stands there for a good ten minutes, nothing more than a bound, beautiful prop as Gunnar makes his appearance, worships her, does calisthenics before her (I’m sure Erin enjoyed watching the pullups and pushups; the man’s a beast!), whips himself before her, and then drops a bag containing another victim at her feet.
And that is when Jessica comes to life. Whatever strength she exuded on the cross pales in comparison to the raw, vibrant sensuality and power of her performance around, over, and through that bathtub.
The Dream Sequence
I won’t reveal how the story gets here, only that there is one other male performer, Frank Leone, in this show, and he ends up being killed and made up to look like the psychokiller’s dead wife and slipped into a dirty, grimy dress. Gunnar takes Frank drown from the straps on the ceiling, the lights go down, and then when they come back up, Frank is gone and Kelly Trevelyn—who plays the memory of the dead wife—is in his place, her dress a bright white. This is merely one of the times in which Kelly plays the revived memory, always clean and white and pristine. After her dance, the lights go down, and when they come back up, it is once more a lifeless Frank in Gunnar’s arms.
I loved how the scene played. The symbolism was obvious but well done: This is why the murderer kills. For just a moment, he found his wife again. I regret that I’m not giving Frank his due. His part opens and closes the sequence, but he’s not in this scene. He is incredibly talented, and his parts in the opening, the scene leading up to his death, and the ending are all amazing even if I’m not providing more details.
The Mattress Dance
Danielle Currica—also a member of the Peek-A-Boo Review burlesque troupe—and Stephi (in matching underwear) dance, roll, slither, and climb across each other on a ripped and rugged mattress in a scene that is not only absolutely sexy but also a showcase of strength and skill.
The scene evokes a sense that these two have been trapped in this basement together a long time and they’ve managed to stave off the horror of their experience in the comfort of each other. I came away from this sequence with the notion that brightness and love can be found even within a nightmare.
The scenes that follow this dance play upon the relationship demonstrated here, which I also liked. This, like the other dances, are developing characters in order to build a story. These interactions matter to the cohesive whole.
Last Dance With Mary Jane
Yes, I’m making a reference to the Tom Petty video in which he dances with a corpse. Gunnar does a similar thing, with Kelly first starting the scene limp in his arms only to rise up, pull him up from the floor, and remove his mask for a last romantic dance. The scene isn’t meant to redeem the killer nor does the audience really feel sympathy for him at any point—Gunnar plays up the horror and creepiness throughout too much to ever think of the killer as anything other than unforgivably evil—but the show ends with the sense that a tortured man is at last at peace, and thus too his victims.
I love watching Gunnar dance, and I was glad that he had his moment to shine. The killer was an ever-present force throughout, but Gunnar’s talent for dance were downplayed to this point.
A Five-Star Show
I like being able to support the arts and artists who are doing fun, creative things like this. The show ran for about an hour, which was all it needed. It is a powerful, raw performance combining dirty, grungy horror elements with beautiful dancing and displays of human athleticism and talent that leave me in awe of what the human body is capable of. The juxtaposition of the grotesque and the beautiful, the horrific and the sensual could leave some people feeling disturbed or uncomfortable. For someone who already finds the sadistic and dominating themes in the horror genre to be slightly erotic, this show was pushing my buttons.
No, I was not physically aroused at any time. But then I also don’t get hard at strip clubs either.
Something for Both of Us in the Basement
I know we both enjoyed the performance. I can imagine her having a visceral reaction to physical power Gunnar displays as the killer. At one point he scoops up one dancer and carries her tenderly off stage. Other times, he tosses his female cast members like rag dolls—which is how the killer sees them: little more than lovely toys in his demented game.
Erin was glad when Gunnar took off the mask. She doesn’t care for creepy horror in general. When we saw the 2003 Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake with Jessica Beil (holy shit, I just Google the movie for the date; I had forgotten how hot she looked!), Erin spent 95% of the time with her head in my shoulder to avoid looking at the screen. She likes Gunnar (he’s an attractive guy); she didn’t care for him in the skin mask.
We both recommend seeing Gunnar Montana’s Basement, which is only out for another couple of weeks. If you don’t see this, keep your eyes open for his next show, whatever that may be. We know we will. I just can’t imagine Gunnar disappointing. His heart is in it too much, and it shows.