A human braid as thick as a traffic jam on the Kennedy roped off the sidewalk in front of the Harris Theater for Music and Dance Tuesday night, causing any casual observer to wonder if the Harris had suddenly started booking rock stars into their high-brow venue, typically reserved for classical music, opera, and concert dance. But guess again. The overflow crowd of hopefuls that night seemed to migrate en masse night after night to whichever box office held coveted ticket turn-backs for The Chicago Dancing Festival, Jay Franke and Lar Lubovitch’s gift to Chicago. Tickets were free to the public, but you had to be on your toes months before to snag them online before all seats were taken.
Seeing such enthusiasm for dance is a joy to behold, but seeing such a broad spectrum of the population in attendance was proof positive that the Festival was indeed fulfilling its producers‘ dream of expanding the audience for dance in Chicago. As the only free festival of its kind in America, The Chicago Dancing Festival strives to cultivate and sustain attention to Chicago as a dance-happening place by offering a cornucopia of the best America has to offer.
The Festival’s ninth iteration wrapped up Saturday night after a week of knock-out programming, including companies and artists from New York, Miami, and Pittsburgh, as well as Chicago’s own Joffrey Ballet, Chicago Human Rhythm Project, Ensemble Español, Trinity Irish Dance, and Hubbard Street Dance Chicago.
The six concerts, in five different programs, were divided between the Harris (Tuesday and Thursday), the Museum of Contemporary Art (Wednesday and the Friday gala, a benefit fundraiser) and the outdoor Pritzker Pavilion (Saturday). I was fortunate enough to catch the first three shows, each of which gave audiences a cross-section of dance genres and choreographic styles.
Part One: Tuesday Night, August 25th, Harris Theater
Tuesday night’s opening offered five modern extrapolations of classical ballet, each utilizing traditional ballet in uniquely untraditional ways. New York City Ballet soloist and resident choreographer Justin Peck’s “Distractions” (2011) was most striking in this respect for his startling reinvention of ballet grammar, cutting and splicing traditional balletic phrases into mind-boggling non-sequiturs, like echappées that launched grands jetés, cabrioles that gave birth to multiple pirouettes that in turn resolved in entre-chat six, and sissones that sliced into pas de siseaux and tours en l’airs. Rhythmic patterns were equally unconventional in their acute sensitivity to composer Alexander Rosenbiatt’s take on Rachmaninoff’s piano variations, performed live at the on-stage grand piano. The effect was that the four men, dressed in white t-shirts and black tights, became the spatial personification of the piano keyboard, reflecting not only the musical structure, but the lightning ripple of arpeggios and trills flying across black and white keys. It didn’t hurt that the quartet harnessed the talents of Daniel Ulbrecht, New York City Ballet principal dancer and artistic director of “Stars of American Ballet,” Arron Scott, soloist, and James Whiteside, principal dancer with American Ballet Theatre, and Jeffrey Cirio former Boston Ballet principal. Their razor-sharp clarity and specificity of attack in beats, turns, and aerial work was matched by lush suspensions, breathy attenuated arabesques and renversées, and off-center torso shifts and contractions that fairly glistened with synchronized brilliance.
Gustavo Ramirez Sansano’s “El Beso” (2014), created for and performed by Ballet Hispanico on Tuesday, and “I Am Mr. B” (2015) created for and performed by Hubbard Street Dance Chicago on Thursday, each played a coy blend of mime and quirky gestures against classical ballet conventions in loving tribute to the art form. (For more on “Mr. B,” see “Part Three” below.)
On Tuesday, the humor of unrequited ardor in “El Beso” (The Kiss) was an instant audience-pleaser. Ballet Hispanico sparkled with infectious energy and superb ensemble dancing under the direction of Eduardo Vilaro, former founder/director of Chicago’s Luna Negra (of blessed memory).
Daniel Ulbrecht’s stunning solo performance of Servy Gallardo’s “Tango” (2008) was all the more spectacular for his unwavering resistance to a wayward flying suspender strap, multiple tours à la seconde and double emboité turns notwithstanding. His batterie is nothing short of phenomenal in its clarity of articulation, and while we all held our breath, Ulbrecht took the day with “the show must go on” determination that drove this little tease of a technical tour de force to sublime heights.
Pam Tanowitz’s NY-based company performed her geometric “Heaven on One’s Head” (2014) with the anonymity of automatons. Set to Conlon Nancarrow’s dissonant String Quartets 1 & 3, performed live by members of the Chicago Philharmonic, the piece gave slow-motion emphasis to first position pliés and relevés. A precision parade of skittering bourées and battements serrés combined with angular, broken sequences in a perpetual motion machine that imitated its music and maintained a repetitive stasis that ultimately lost focus and interest. Clearly influenced by the chance work of Merce Cunnigham, “Heaven...,” never achieved the conceptual depth, spatial design, or choreographic inventiveness that infused its model with a humanity that transcended random movement.
Lar Lubovitch’s “The Black Rose” (2014) makes a grand dive into The Dark Ages with tongue partially-placed in cheek. Fritz Masten’s shades-of-black tulle-and-gauze romantic tutus and black velvet waistcoats reference 19th-century classical ballet. Solid story ballet conventions of corps de ballet and star soloists as the only defined characters told the audience at the get-go that we were in store for a good, old fashioned fairy tale at the hands of a skilled storyteller, except not quite. The story that inspired “The Black Rose” derives from the grisly ancient oral legends and folktales that haunted the imagination of a world consumed by superstition, death, and the devil. The story of “The Black Rose” eventually filtered down to the Brothers Grimm in cleaned-up versions that approximated acceptable children’s fare with elements one can recognize in Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel, and Snow White. Lubovitch, intrigued by their forbears, tells a chilling tale of date-rape, human slavery, infanticide, and canibalism with devilish relish that capitalizes on Scott Marshall’s commissioned score. The music creates a veritable house of horrors with distorted mirrors of Tchaikovsky’s “Sleeping Beauty” ballet, the score to the Disney movie classic, Gregorian chant, ghoulish echoes of eery rock music, and the song, “Beautiful Dreamer.” Add sound effects of a ballroom dinner crowd and birds chirping, a spider’s web backdrop projection, and giant knife and fork props into the mix and you have a dark make-believe environment of good and evil. It’s deliciously larger than life and almost makes fun of itself, especially in the lip-licking perversion of the Rothbart-wanna-be villain, but fortunately Lubovitch respects his material enough to invest his characters with authenticity and choreographic verve that kept the audience on the edge of its seats and roaring with enthusiasm. Lubovitch’s exaggerated story-telling rings true to its source in movement that wrenches emotion out of the body in huge sweeping gesture and utilizes the power of the ensemble à la Greek chorus. He infuses principal roles with movement that is both original and character-specific in mythic, stylized proportion that calls to mind some of the best of Graham. At the heart of the piece is our fascination with the timeless mysteries of birth and death, love and jealousy, greed and generosity, and our insatiable appetite for a good story that plays it out in all its twisted detail.
Part Two: Wednesday, August 26th, The MCA
“Modern Women,” Wednesday’s Festival offering, gave a historic perspective on modern dance and the pioneering women who forged its emergence in the 20th century. Beginning with the first dance film footage ever of Loie Fuller in “The Butterfly” (1897) and traveling the early decades of the 20th century with Isadora Duncan and Graham, the program leaped forward to three 21st-century women.
The thread of influence was palpable, beginning with “Valse Brillante” (1915) choreographed by Isadora Duncan, staged by Lori Belilove and performed by Belilove’s The Isadora Duncan Dance Company. Duncan strived for natural freedom in movement with central reliance on the breath as the source of all impulse to move. The four diaphanous dancers exemplified Duncan’s aesthetic with a floating quality of upper carriage openness, arms that lifted and propelled locomotion from the breath, and effortless grace in the simple movement patterns set to a Chopin waltz.
Martha Graham’s technical foundation and creative aesthetic are also centered in the breath and the contraction and release of the pelvis. She pioneered the amplification of the darker aspects of the human psyche through movement. “Deep Song” (1937), danced by Graham company member Blakeley White McGuire, exemplifies Graham’s use of the central core of the body as the well-spring of feeling and here especially, as the source of anguish. The subject is the Spanish Civil War and the women who suffered the oppression of tyranny and the loss of loved ones. Her geometric black and white gown moved in concert with the angular, percussive gestures, interior emotion wrought in external shape.
Kate Weare’s engaging excerpt from “Unstruck” (2015) combined three meltingly slow, oozing bodies who alternately manipulated, supported, lifted and caught each other, sometimes with brutal control, sometimes tenderly, in a study on the mutability of relationship.
Crystal Pite’s solo, “A Picture of You Falling” (2008), reprised from the HSDC March 2015 season at the 6 PM show by Hubbard Street’s Jesse Bechard, was the perfect 21st-century companion piece to Graham’s “Deep Song.” Mechanical automotive sounds both mimicked and propelled the dancer’s mechanical breakdown as he responded to a female voice calmly intoning, “This is the sound of your heart hitting the floor.” The emotional impact of his movement was like a psychological road map to total breakdown. The juxtaposition of the cool, detached female voice: “Knees, hip, hands, elbows: this is how you collapse,” with the percussive sound effects made the gut-wrenchingly emotional devastation of Bechard’s man in a business suit all the more powerful.
Wednesday night’s program concluded with a repeat performance of Tanowitz’s “Heaven on One’s Head.”
Part Three: Thursday, August 27th, The Harris Theater
A Tchaikovsky theme definitely surfaced in Thursday night's program, by far the most varied night of the Festival stylistically. Miami City Ballet opened the program with a tepid performance of George Balanchine’s “Allegro Brillante” (1956). A grainy sound track of Tchaikovsky’s Third Piano Concerto, Op. 75 diminished the luster of this vibrant ballet, but MCB dancers soldiered on valiantly with some clean triple pirouettes en pointe and precision corps ballet work that alternated men’s and women’s ensembles in neat counterpoint and canons across the space.
The Chicago Human Rhythm Project’s “In The Meantime...” (Festival-commissioned premiere) teamed the electrified feet of CHRP hoofers Marty Bronson, Jessica Chapuis, and Zada Cheeks with Trinity Irish Dance Company phenomena Maggie Doyle and Peter Dziak, and steamy Ensemble Español couple Nestor Corona and Claudia Pizarro. Lively on-stage accompaniment of bass, cajon, accordion, and vocalist added a rich layer to to the celebration of the universal impulse to make rhythm with the body, with sound, and with musical instruments.
American Ballet Theatre soloists Sarah Lane and Joseph Gorak danced the Grand Pas de Deux from The Sleeping Beauty, another Tchaikovsky top-ten hit. Gorak’s cabrioles were lighter than air, his clean double tours could have drilled a small vertical tunnel through the Chicago cloud cover, and his split jetés en tournants sliced the space with nary a ripple. Lane’s pizzicato pointe work, pique turns, and otherwise fancy footwork were as dainty and delicate as she, the epitome of the princess.
Hubbard Street reprised it’s spring season premiere of Gustavo Ramirez Sansano’s “Mr. B” with even greater madcap abandon. Jesse Bechard, as the spoken voice of Mr. B (George Balanchine, to whom Sansano pays tribute), regaled the house with the master’s anecdotes and aphorisms, then joined the rubber-band athleticism of his HSDC cohorts, in identical uni-sex Mr. B navy blue Blazers and string ties, to dance the living daylights out of Tchaikovsky’s Third Suite for Orchestra in G Major (op. 55, 1884). The music was Balanchine’s choice for his “Theme and Variations” (1947), which exemplifies his innovative use of the corps de ballet as the embodiment of musical instrumentation. Sansano emulates his mentor with both humor and ingenuity, putting his own inimitable stamp on Tchaikovsky.
The program concluded with The Joffrey Ballet in a breezy performance of Stanton Welch’s lyrical “Maninyas” (1996). The women’s flowing split skirts and the gauzy hanging drapes through which the dancers floated in and out had a choreography all their own that complimented Welch’s romantic coupling. A recurring movement featured weightless arms and relaxed hands extending heaven-ward in seeming supplication, a come-hither second-position plié with hands braced on thighs, hiccup pas de chats and elbow fanning. A zest-for-life, full-body energy propelled the five couples in a series of duets, most notably Fabrice Calmels and Mahallia Ward in a tenderly intimate interlude. Amber Neumann continues to fill the stage with her vibrant attack and heightened musicality.