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The A.W.A.R.D. Show! 2009

By Zachary Whittenburg:

Opening the first of four nights of Chicago's inaugural A.W.A.R.D. Show! grant competition, Columbia College Dance Department Chair Bonnie Brooks succinctly termed it a "grand experiment in dance democracy." Taking a necessary moment to explain the program's history (it's a Boeing-funded transplant of a successful New York venture in its third year) and acronymous title (Audiences With Artists Responding to Dance), Brooks welcomed the full house with an invitation to vote our consciences not just upon what we saw, but what we felt could be achieved with a $10,000 cash injection.Rachel Bunting has been making work quite a few years now as The Humans, a brain trust of collaborators from which she draws on a per-project basis. Her duet with Precious Jennings, who I am (who I am not) found many hallmarks of her style settling into place. Comprised of a few scenes gradually involving a vaguely-ceremonial portal hung with chimes, Jennings and Bunting let the layers of their twindom (Bunting has an identical, Collin, who designs her costumes) seep out through a satisfyingly broad delta of narrow channels. The broad strokes of two dancers fitting their bodies into complementing shapes mid-air were offset by a delicate motif of thumb-and-forefinger air threading that originally looked like holding string but was later revealed to be the representation of owls' eyes. In another twist, the "doorway" later becomes a mirror. Its transitions were deftly handled by the pair, who were in top form and, appropriate to the piece, seemingly of one mind. From India by way of Seattle, Archana Kumar is to be commended for pushing a fusion of traditional Indian styles -- Bharatanatyam and Kathak -- and modern dance and improvisation past superficial flirtation into total synthesis. Her solo, Unveil the Beginning, was part of a year-and-a-half-long process that involved not only this stylistic merge but also an assessment through movement of life cycles and rebirth. Many of its images were potent: Kumar strikingly uses her costume (a sheer white dress and green veil, both hanging to the floor) in one of the first to create the suggestion of a giant vagina. Although abstracted through multiple dance languages, Kumar's solo was admirably lucid in its intent. Generic, beat-driven world music, recorded waterfalls and suddenly-dominant, crude video unfortunately undercut the impact of vocabulary obviously born of extensive consideration and research.Among not just these but all twelve of The A.W.A.R.D. Show!'s competitors, there's arguably too much variety to judge one against the other. Still, intriguingly out of place was a dance that would in most circumstances represent the norm, Track 4 by collaborative choreography team Francisco Avi and Stephanie Martinez. A quartet of boilerplate composition and influence-heavy material, it's a pleasing enough work that showcased the youthful honesty and polished technique of its dancers. Reworked from its original outing as a commission from DanceWorks Chicago, Track 4 seems to have lost some of the passion and intensity given it by its dut cast, however, and up against the multifaceted rigor of Kumar's, Bunting's and Julia Rhoads' pieces it came across as uninspired and standard. What Rhoads' Lucky Plush Productions entered into the show was titled Memory Mash but is tied to a larger work-in-progress, Punk Yankees, which will premiere on the same stage this fall. Beginning with a bit of text and loose unison, it dives quick and deep into a choreographic DJ set (aided by a Girl Talk-esque score of pop and dance-history samples by Stefen Robinson) that swipes at references from mainstream (Swan Lake, Thriller) to insider (Tere O'Connor) to downright obscure. Fragmented dialogue among the six dancers, though, wraps it in enough context to let the agenda of Memory Mash bridge the gap even to audience members not geeked-out enough to get jokes about JosLim. Indeed, it didn't keep Lucky Plush from walking away with the series' first win, which guarantees them at least $1,000 come Saturday.Being able to see just one of these performances is a real heartbreaker -- The A.W.A.R.D. Show! is a major development for the Chicago dance community and many of the eight dances that remain to be shown I haven't seen before. If you're planning to show support for your favorite this weekend you're likely already holding tickets, but if not you should move fast. For those outside Chicago or otherwise engaged, the Dance Center's website is announcing each evening's winner at 10:00am the following morning and the grand prize late Saturday night.

Reviewed by Zachary Whittenburg on 06/25/2009 at 10:12 AM