Giardella's work is wildly hilarious one-minute and deeply introspective the next. She performs like a tightrope walker without a net. I had the pleasure of seeing Giardella's newest show, Bare Essentials, like spring when it enjoyed many soldout performances at the Dance Complex in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Following the performance, I spoke with her about the show, which is beginning a second run-with new material – on October 14 at the same venue.

Giardella's performance is inspired by the art of improvisation. For the past seventeen years, she has been investigating the creation of theatrical performance forms that incorporate both scripted aspects and spontaneous text and choreography.

"I have been guided in part by the muses of jazz improvisation, where basic musical themes become the departure points for countless creative variations," Giardella explains. "Similarly, in Bare Essentials, there is a set dramatic 'spine,' with recurring themes and islands of departure, that provides a framework for the improvisational material, which changes night to night. While there are certain elements (characters, issues, movement phrases) that are always pre present, no two performances are the same. 'Theatrical jazz' engages the endless. ''possibilities I know where I am going in the overall vision of the piece, but how I get there and whom I meet along the way are deliciously changeable wild cards each evening."

Bare Essentials, Giardella says, "is about coming home. It"s about coming home to ourselves, to what really matters, to our bare essentials." We follow the life of Rita Callibrani, self -described recovering serial monogamist who is trying to figure out how to five alone. Rita has spent the last five years separating from her ex-lover Paula, with whom she had a nine-month relationship. In the opening moment, we meet quickwitted Rita, a '90s woman who leaves her nine-to-five cubicle job and comes home to her beloved and hated answering machine. The night I saw the show, Rita literally crawled into her apartment. When she dropped the groceries and tampons flew everywhere, the audience roared with the laughter of recognition at a truly "bad hair day." Rita confided to the audience.