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BONEdanse (formerly Breakbone DanceCo)
BONEdanse is an experimental dance company based in Chicago who creates, performs and presents challenging and stimulating dance theater in unconventional site-specific locations as well as conventional venues and are driven by the use of movement, theater, and multi-media elements by excavating the tropes found within the human experience. BONEdanse is celebrating 13 Years of full evening-length highly theatrical works and extended 2-4 week show runs with their concerts that typically delve into the less frequented territories of human nature to find both strength and fragility.
Since 1997, Breakbone DanceCo., now BONEdanse, has been driven by Atalee Judy’s personal “art as therapy” approach to her movement and performance style as a cathartic process to grow and delve into socio-political issues and controversial artmaking as a political stance. The main values founded for the company are a direct result from Judy’s belief that art can be a catalyst for overcoming fear and can inspire change for both artist and viewer. Judy’s athletic movement vocabulary is a culmination from her experiences in the martial arts, the punk rock scene from the 1980’s, formal release techniques in dance as well as a naturally strong, expressive and vulnerable performance style. Currently the company is moving past it’s seminal roots of aggressive and combative style of performances to more subtle and surreal explorations. BONEdanse is delving into the concept of unknowns – accepting them, being in the moment and letting go of control – to allow for less formulaic approach to their art.
BONEdanse has performed in Chicago and International venues including The Dance Center of Columbia College, Ruth Page Center for the Arts, Links Hall, Northwestern University’s (McCormick Auditorium & Margorie Ward Ballroom), Unviersity of Texas at Austin, Harold Washington Library, Viaduct Theater, Chopin Theater, The Building Stage, Storefront Theater, Museum of Contemporary Art, Prop Thtr, Metro Chicago, Vittum Theater, Athenaeum Theater, Hamlin Park Studio Theater, Strawdog Theater, DiVersia International Festival of Dance at Kostroma Drama Theatre (Kostroma, Russia), Toronto International Dance Festival at Theatre Baillie (Toronto, Canada), The Los Angeles Women’s Festival at El Portal Theatre, The Park Studio (Amsterdam), Danse in the Square (Amsterdam, Holland). Judy’s achievements have been recognized by her supporters earning numerous consecutive grants from private foundations and an Artistic Fellowship from the Illinois Arts Council in 2006. In 2005 Breakbone was the recipient of the Chicago Dance and Music Alliance’s Elizabeth F. Cheney Dance Achievement Award, citing Atalee’s work as an example of excellence in the field of dance. In 2009 Judy was granted the Chicago Dancemakers Forum Lab Artist Award. Since 2002 Atalee Judy has been an artist-in-residence with Arts Partner The Chicago Moving Company & Nana Shineflug with Hamlin Park/The Chicago Park District.
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Growing Pains: Breakbone becomes BONEdanse,
Changing its name and ways.
Dance, Recommended Dance Shows by Sharon Hoyer
Adolescence is a time of rapid, often confusing and, for some, painful change; identities come into question, rebellions flare, bones quite literally ache. Atalee Judy finds herself experiencing such restlessness as her company, formerly known as Breakbone DanceCo, enters its teenage years. "The change of the name is very symbolic of the change in people's lives and my own desire not to be categorized or pegged," she says. "I have an aversion to stagnation and being seen as one thing. That's probably from the punk scene: messing around with different identities."
Judy, a lifelong punk, is the creator of bodyslam technique: a strength-intensive, gravity-embracing movement approach forged from the kinesis of mosh pits, dojos and dance studios. Breakbone DanceCo was the name synonymous with the technique; audiences could expect a Breakbone show to be aggressive and political; a fist raised in defiance rather than an evening of refined aesthetics or cerebral abstraction. When Judy announced she was changing the company name to BONEdanse, there was more to the moniker than a new label on the same product. "It was a personal change and a company change. It's not that I won't do bodyslam anymore, I'm just tired of making my company do it all the time. I was getting the sense that they weren't into it and I decided that was okay; I honed the company down to collaborators. I'm allowing a lot more elements into the work; before I would have a set tunnel vision about what I would want to see on stage and wouldn't allow for happy accidents. Now I'm opening it up to 'let's let this dance piece make itself.'"
The first results of the collaboration will be seen in the Dance Shelter concert this weekend. BONEdanse performs a new piece about personal damage and backfired attempts at self-improvement, sharing the bill with fellow Chicago Moving Company Artists-In-Residence Ayako Kato and Rachel Bunting. Links Hall founder Bob Eisen, in town from Russia, is also on the program, as are composers Barry Bennett and Stone. It's a real bang-for-your-buck kind of program: lots of bodies rotating through the stage, lots of new work, some of it progress, most likely a touch messy in places. It's the kind of programming Judy cites as a change for good in the Chicago dance scene. "Grants are harder to get for less-established companies," she says. "Artists are banding together to put together shows. I'm seeing fringier festivals happening, offering opportunities for artists to have their work seen without putting on a show of their own. Not a high-gloss standard, and that's what excites me." (Sharon Hoyer)
