Comments (0) Best Dance Performance in the Past 12 Months - 2009

Mad King Thomas

It's good to worry a bit when you go to a Mad King Thomas show—not about whether the artists might get hurt or what the critics will say, but how close you should get to the action onstage. During a Mad King Thomas program, the fourth wall is broken down with a sledgehammer, and everybody in the audience bears witness, at close range, to the glorious mayhem unleashed by the Sage Award-winning trio of Tara King, Theresa Madaus, and Monica Thomas. In January's Love Me, Love My Questionable Art at the Bryant-Lake Bowl, MKT shared the stage with dancers Sally Rousse, Hijack, and Galen Treuer. The evening's high jinks ran the gamut from high art to low, from twisted family stories to a doughnut auction—plus a post-feminist fashion show for good measure. King, Madaus, and Thomas owe their aesthetic to performance art icons like Karen Finley and Dancenoise, but they certainly have their own voices, and right now these women are using them to roar.