SeeChicagoDance.com

COLECTIVE NOTIONS

By Laura Molzahn

It's a big step for a performer to try on a choreographer’s shoes --- dancing is a much more passive art. (I've heard dancers say, "You never tell a choreographer 'no.' Never.") It's one thing to take direction, and quite another to make yourself responsible for the concept, the development, and the execution of a piece with your name on it.

Margi Cole, artistic director of the all-female Dance COLEctive, says she has dancers now who are interested in choreography, which hasn't always been the case. Mentoring them, she's produced "COLEctive Notions," an interesting but understandably uneven 75-minute program of five new works by company dancers plus Cole's own "Taking Hold." It runs through Sunday at Link’s Hall.

Maggie Koller's "Push" is engagingly eccentric. It has a unified look and retro feel, thanks to the four dancers’ black-and-white cocktail dresses, and an unusual concept: the dancers take turns pushing a button on a little plastic robot who then clicks and clacks briefly. He seems the reset button for AM Brother (Sean and Pat Cassin) as they channel disparate snatches of sound --- blips, old recorded dialogue, laughter, a slow horn playing lazy jazz. The dancers too can look robotic; or they seem reluctant, repressed, clapping their hands over their mouths or eyes. I thought of taxi dancers trapped in a seedy lounge, dime-a-dance girls.

Jessica Post's trio "Harmonic Breath," set to Bach music for solo cello, begins with an evocative motion for one dancer. Seated on the floor, she pedals her legs in and out while flowing forward at the waist and back upright; the movement, which suggests sobbing, goes perfectly with the slow, deep notes of the cello. When the music and dancers speed up, their quickened breathing mingles with the instrument’s “breath.” It’s a simple but effective frame for a dance.

Donnette Cannonie takes on a big ensemble piece in "Mon Confort," set to Adele's pop song "Hometown Glory." In the prologue, performed in silence, one woman seems to wake from a sad or frightening dream and looks around hopelessly, shoulders hunched. But Cannonie's true talent is her use of all eight dancers; when everyone bursts into movement at the song's chorus, the effect is dramatic. Cannonie has experience as a commercial dancer and choreographer for dance teams, and it shows in the close correspondence between music, lyrics, and movement.

Olivia F. May's quintet "Intermezzo" makes assured use of repetition and of the space. Four dancers walk slowly to surround a woman downstage, regarding her like caretakers. She begins to move, then they all start making strong arm gestures --- crossing them at the forearms, pushing them out forcefully. One gesture suggests Diana drawing her bow, or a musician bowing strings. Though the arm movements are distinct, they also rhyme. Set to lively, complex string music by the Kronos Quartet and punctuated by expressive breathing, "Intermezzo" is confidently made and performed. That makes it all the more disappointing it has no real ending --- the music just fades out and the dancers retreat into darkness.

More than any other work, Molly Grimm-Leasure's solo "Shhhhe" has a beginning and proceeds to an end. It's set to Balmorhea's "Barefoot Pilgrims," a piece for piano and strings that starts slow and thoughtful and turns agitated. Grimm-Leasure begins with her back to us, in a party dress complete with petticoat that gives her the look of a little girl though it also emphasizes her womanly shape. She’s sometimes shy, unwilling to show her face or extend her arms; but other times she’s defiant, fists planted on hips and legs wide. When she eventually turns to face us, she puts her hands over her eyes. Grimm-Leasure performs the piece exquisitely, with swift falls and leaps back up as if lightning had struck her down, then shocked her upright. Everything in the piece, even the defiance, suggests shame, and the ending seems to ask forgiveness. Grimm-Leasure makes herself very vulnerable in a piece so sparse and structured that the audience can give in to its feeling.

Sometimes revisiting a dance, as I did watching Cole's octet "Taking Hold," can be humbling. Though I called it "tenuous and unfinished" last January, this time around I recognized its emotional unity, created by anxiety. Cole makes equilibrium impossible, which might have contributed to my impression that the piece was unsettled and directionless. Set to cello music by Zoe Keating, it moves the dancers quickly in and out of various duos and trios full of grasping embraces and sudden rejections; it can be painful to watch. Even the final embrace is not reassuring, since all the other ones dissolved. Cole’s whirlwind of attempted and failed possession is all too effective.

Reviewed by Laura Molzahn on 05/22/2010 at 11:16 PM