SeeChicagoDance.com

DANCE UNION "SIMPLY SHOWING"

By Laura Molzahn

Ayako Kato's Dance Union series gives artists the freedom to experiment before a small but knowledgeable crowd. True, on Saturday night there was a bit of scrambling with the tech aspects at the Drucker Center’s Fasseas White Box Theater. Video setup (and breakdown) happened in full view of the audience, and we moved our own chairs around.  

That's all in the spirit of Kato's DIY showcases. Each of the four pieces in "Simply Showing," the series' third one-night-only event, succeeded insofar as the performers seized the opportunity they’d been given. The personal was paramount.

And what could be more personal than putting yourself on the line moment by moment? Music-and-dance improv ensemble OosImaginary took a risk with a pretty huge "orchestra" of nine musicians, including one on toy xylophone. They provided a cheerful wall of sound, interspersed with an eerie recording of wolves howling, as the backdrop to movement by company members Lisa Frank and Sam Goodman and add-on Matthew McMunn.

The trio setup yielded the narrative tension. The two men, evenly matched in size and strength, engaged in vigorous contact improv, creating an odd woman out in Frank. She did wrangle her way into the action eventually but never achieved the emotional connection evident between the two men. The dancing was expert: soft, soundless rolls and daring balances, the delicate use of fingers and hands. But I wish Frank and Goodman had dropped the stony modern-dance stares and allowed their faces to reflect the movement and their feeling. McMunn's solo was brightened, invigorated, by a face as alive as his body.  

Suzy Grant's text-and-movement solo, "Even Sometimes When I Can't See You," takes a more openly autobiographical direction than previous work. Her drag persona, Rocco Granite, appears in a videotape to close the piece, lip-sync crooning "Unforgettable" with Grant (live) in a recording by Natalie and Nat King Cole. I knew in advance that Grant would be wearing a dress of bubble wrap --- but surprise! It provided the sound score. Every time she collapsed there were dozens of tiny explosions, as if a miniature World War III had broken out around her.

That warlike undercurrent also suited the text, though not in any obvious way. Grant was humorously self-effacing, not angry, as she talked about how she's dealt with feeling "different" --- from her family, from other girls, even from other dancers. Rocco Granite seems to be her last, best hope for expressing who she is. Yet to me he seemed something of an obstacle. When I’d seen the piece earlier, in rehearsal, I'd been very moved by Grant's vulnerability. At the performance, it was largely covered over with ironic layers of costume and persona. I missed it.

Erin Carlisle Norton's "March of the Oys" for the Moving Architects was the evening's most conventional dance experience. Four women begin with doll-like poses and movements: stiffly curved arms, lock-kneed legs, rocking motions to perambulate. Given the season, the title, and the toy references, it's impossible not to think of ballet and "The Nutcracker." Near the beginning, two dancers lock wrists (their fingers are immoveable) and waltz together mechanically. But by the end, as everyone begins to move more freely, all four face off and glare at one another. With self-consciousness and freedom comes competition.

Rachel Bunting, a current CDF Lab Artist, showed an excerpt from her work in progress, "Paper Shoes." It was impossible to know how all the elements here would relate in the full piece, but for sure Bunting was experimenting. There were tons of elements: two mismatched boots, five dancers, white gloves, black or white costumes (by Collin Bunting), three metal folding chairs, a metronome, what appeared to be Kleenex, and sheets of paper unfolded, snapped open, refolded, torn up.

Whatever the message might be, the tone was chilly, as the dancers were trapped under the chairs or teetered on them, crumpled the paper or blew the flimsy Kleenex across the floor. Bunting’s solo --- especially a tense, angular, sustained spasm up from flat-on-her-back --- expressed alienated anguish. There were, if anything, too many ideas tumbling around the stage. But in this setting, profusion should trump polish.

Reviewed by Laura Molzahn on 12/06/2010 at 10:18 AM