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Giordano Jazz Dance Chicago
For more than 40 years, Giordano Jazz Dance Chicago has brought the excitement of American jazz dancing to audiences throughout the United States and in countries around the world – including Germany, France, Italy, Switzerland, Russia, the Bahamas, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, and Japan. GJDC serves as host performing company at each summer’s Jazz Dance World Congress, which has been held at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., at the University at Buffalo, in Japan, Germany, Mexico, Costa Rica, Phoenix, and Chicago. In 2004, the company received the Chicago Dance Award for its production and performance of Ron De Jesus’, representing the vital new directions taken by the company. Giordano Jazz Dance Chicago has a very active outreach and education program, including school performances in the Chicago metropolitan area, a residency with the Chicago Park District, and teaching residencies on many college campuses.
Today Nan Giordano serves as Artistic Director, and Gus Giordano continues a close involvement with all activities of the company. Dance critic and historian Ann Barzel has said that Giordano jazz dance “expresses feelings, portrays emotions, confronts problems, analyzes ideas in the tempo of today. It is accessible. In the exhilaration of its presentations, it mirrors the freedom that we like to think is the American way.
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Giordano Jazz Dance Chicago's MOVE!
By Sid Smith:
Philadelphia's innovative choreographer Rennie Harris is a bright light of contemporary dance, broadening its vocabulary and bringing in a street vernacular startling in urgency, but ingeniously interwoven into classic concert hall presentation.
"I Want You" is Harris' new piece unveiled at the Harris Theater over the weekend by Giordano Jazz Dance Chicago--an important commission by the troupe. This is a company that in some ways prizes entertainment above all else, and Harris doesn't disappoint. This relatively brief ensemble bash is irresistible fun from start to quick finish, so fast and seamlessly put together you hardly notice how many different street styles combine to achieve its magical effects. You'd have to be sound asleep not to like it, but the infectious energy and rousing, two-part score (consisting of selections by Vikter Duplaix and James Brown) aren't likely to let you dose off. Harris' vivid imagination and pure love of movement shimmers throughout this seductive piece for 10 dancers, rushing to its finish long before the audience is ready--an embodiment of the less-is-more rule choreographers all too often violate. At the end of this very likable Giordano troupe line-up, it almost plays like a dessert.
Harris devises two separate looks and moods, two distinct components that both get your feet stomping and hands clapping. The first, to the Duplaix, involves short-lived but intricate foot patterns that give an almost ballet-like muscle to the breezy pop moves. Buoyant and explosive already, the first section makes way for Brown's "Get Up, Get Into It, Get Involved," a score that all by itself heightens the mood into one of soulful hyperspace. A work that starts out as quick enough thus segues into the explosive, a streetwise hoedown that literally keeps going, as if we're still right in the middle, through the falling of the final curtain. The Giordano troupe has a great time with this one, and so does the audience.
Two other works by dancemakers closer to home also got their premiere outings. Autumn Eckman's "commonthread" for only five dancers shows off pleasing dance design and festive showmanship. Label her promising. The original, melody-rich, invigorating electric fiddle score by Dan Myers and John Ovnik was played live on the side of the stage by Myers himself, and to this Eckman provides a quintet who move with sweeping, undulating grace and who team up in various combinations for very brief harmony--a quick duet formed within the larger group for a spell, for instance. It's an eye-catching arrangement she uses time and again, and yet sparingly, too, in that the come-togethers are so short. Blink and you almost miss them.
"Gravity," the third premiere, by company dancer Lindsey Leduc Brenner, is a straightforward romantic duet, danced with spark and an easy sensuality Friday by Craig Kaufman and Meredith Schultz. Underscored by Sara Bareilles, who informs us this is a couple who can't always get along but can't keep from each other, either, "Gravity" offers a pleasing tension heightened by at times what seems long periods in which the two dancers don't touch. This is love deferred, but eventually consummated, amorous and even giddy, if somewhat conflicted.
The revivals showcased work by key Giordano contributors, beginning with Jon Lehrer's "A Ritual Dynamic," flush with the talents of this former Giordano dancer who now runs his own Buffalo troupe. Though not my favorite work from Lehrer, I enjoyed "Ritual" more on this viewing, rich as it is with exotic combinations, including one choice construct wherein one dancer jumps into the arms of another, landing and held aloft as if the partner were her chair. Lehrer's smooth direction and logical movement flow includes the eerie, hypnotic tableau of dancers caught in a mysterious, spellbinding stillness.
"Move!," as the troupe labeled this engagement, also featured revivals of Tony Powell's "Rapture," a jazzy exploration of Steve Reich, and Brock Clawson's "Give and Take."
