Weighty Issues

Dance, at its best, captures nuance particularly well, allowing us to feel deeply and purely. In its wordlessness, it places a primal reliance on movement and embodied knowledge as communication all its own. It can speak directly from the body to the heart, bypassing the brain’s drive to “make sense of.”

Performance

Tamar Rogoff’s “Drop Dead…Gorgeous”

Place

La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, New York, NY, October 17, 2025

Words

Sophie Bress

Gardiner Comfort, Shaena Kate, Gerlanda Di Stefano, and Gina Bonati in “Drop Dead…Gorgeous” by Tamar Rogoff. Photograph by Kristen Sollecito

Tamar Rogoff’s evening length dance-theater work, “Drop Dead…Gorgeous,” on view at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in New York City through November 2, has noble intentions. Taking on issues of body image, disordered eating, and our cultural obsession with beauty and weight loss, the 90-minute work imagines a reality TV game show, “Gimme Gimme Gimme,” in which contestants compete in various challenges to win their dream bodies. Despite its ambitions, “Drop Dead…Gorgeous” fails to capitalize on dance’s ability to capture nuance, instead delivering a portrayal of these complex issues that feels flat and, at times, reductive.

The first part of the performance is largely theatrical in nature, taking the form of a taping of “Gimme Gimme Gimme.” A charismatic and cruel host, played by Gardiner Comfort, introduces the contestants, two young women and one older, played by Shaena Kate, Gerlanda Di Stefano, and Gina Bonati. Comfort proceeds to pick apart the bodies of the older contestant, Bonati, and the more curvy of the young women, Kate. He praises the small frame of ballet dancer and three-time “Gimme, Gimme, Gimme” winner Di Stefano—while simultaneously reinforcing the message that she still must make changes in order to be considered “perfect.”

This portion of “Drop Dead…Gorgeous” is the most successful. With its unflinching interrogation of our culture’s messaging surrounding women’s bodies, weight, and aging, it is, intentionally, difficult to watch. “Gimme Gimme Gimme,” though, isn’t actually too far from fact. In 2004, a reality TV series called “The Swan” premiered, the premise of which was to turn a group of “ugly ducklings” into “swans” through an intense makeover process that involved extensive cosmetic surgery. Though the series ultimately lasted only two seasons, another show, “The Biggest Loser,” which publicly and shamefully documented individuals’ weight-loss processes, had a longer tenure, running from 2004-2016.

Gardiner Comfort and Gina Bonati in “Drop Dead…Gorgeous” by Tamar Rogoff. Photograph by Kristen Sollecito

The ethics of such aspects of our culture deserve a closer look, and I applaud Rogoff’s desire to investigate them, as well as her drive to comment on the unrealistic and harmful ideal of the “ballet body”—which, according to the program notes, is an issue that affected her personally as a young dancer. Despite good intentions, as the performance went on, it began to feel as though “Drop Dead…Gorgeous” unknowingly reinforced the very same systems it sought to interrogate.

The second portion of the performance was ushered in, first, by Di Stefano’s ballet performance during “Gimme, Gimme, Gimme’s” talent portion, which started with an unsteady teetering en pointe before the dancer, apparently emaciated and malnourished due to her ongoing battle with disordered eating, collapsed to the floor. After the obvious issue was brushed over— and Comfort ushered Di Stefano off the stage, allowing her to return a few moments later, newly beaming—Kate was forced to strip down to her undergarments by an unrelenting Comfort. As she was preparing to remove her bra, a protective and motherly Bonati stepped forward to conceal the traumatized young woman.

At this point, as if by magic, Kate and Bonati were given the gift of total body acceptance and began to exist on what felt like a mythical plane. As they moved about the stage in a whimsical, somatically driven, contemporary style, they attempted to reach Di Stefano—still in the throes of her eating disorder—with their siren song of self-love.

By some godly grace, these two women who had been so traumatized by their experiences on “Gimme, Gimme, Gimme” were suddenly healed, espousing a gospel of complete self love that, with its lack of nuance, felt like toxic positivity. In moving these characters so quickly to a space of acceptance and denying them the grit and growth of a journey towards it, Rogoff also denied them their humanity—albeit in a different way than Comfort did. The ballet dancer, just as she was given praise of her body, was also given the grace of full character development.

Gardiner Comfort and Gerlanda Di Stefano in “Drop Dead…Gorgeous” by Tamar Rogoff. Photograph by Kristen Sollecito

The performance ends with Di Stefano, who’d vacillated between Comfort’s endless quest (he, too, is revealed to be a victim as he pursues more and more absurd surgeries to make himself taller) and Kate and Bonati’s heaven of self-love. Di Stefano ultimately joins Comfort. A stark projection of the dancer’s obituary creates a false ending for the piece, before Di Stefano appears on the stage again, proclaiming that she “didn’t want to die” and “could make a different choice.” She then proceeds to join Kate and Bonati on their beach blanket as they snack on bread, cheese, and grapes in the heavenly sun.

I struggle to accept the fact that an eating disorder, and an untimely death due to the effects of one, is a choice. Eating disorders, body dysmorphia, and subsequent recovery from these conditions are, in part, a force outside one’s own control. Sufferers, of course, have autonomy, but these are illnesses as real and painful as any other.

By not fully acknowledging the reality that accepting oneself is a daily struggle, especially for those with disordered eating and body dysmorphia, Rogoff presented only two options: total love of oneself in a mythical, heavenly place or total surrender to the pursuit of perfection—and therefore, death. It’s impossible—and ultimately, unhelpful—to try to boil down something so nuanced as recovery and self-acceptance into an easy-to-digest package. Without gray area, the topic is just as elusive as perfection itself.

Sophie Bress

Sophie Bress is an arts and culture journalist and dance critic. She regularly contributes to Dance Magazine and Fjord Review, and has also written for the New York Times, NPR, Observer, Pointe, and more.

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Giselle Status